How Spirit Takes Pictures

Some Clown writes "MSNBC has a great article on the details of the camera system on the Mars Rover titled How Sprit makes great photos. Apparently the high resolution images are all done with a 1-megapixel camera. All the money is in the CCD and Lens. The hardcore digital photographers in the crowd will probably find the article to be only a teaser on the technical specs, but the rest of us in the unwashed masses should find it interesting."

Comments

I was honestly surprised.

[ActionPlant]

The Spirit being from NASA, I was assuming it had at least 6MP cameras. This really is pretty cool. Perhaps I'll dust my old 1MP camera off and see if I can do anything similar. If nothing else, they've proven that it's not completely worthless yet. Pretty nifty.

Damon,

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[coolmacdude]

Perhaps I'll dust my old 1MP camera off and see if I can do anything similar.

If you had RTFA, you would know that you can't.

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[Mod Me God]

It is interesting, but I suppose it is explained because this sort of tech has to be (physically) tested a couple+ years in advance (and 2 years is in the final test/construction phase already, initial planning was years before), so strapping the latest untested camera in to a planned and tested system would potentially introduce a weak point in the system. Yeah, pretty nifty, kinda shows the potential 'old' hardware has when used to its full potential.

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[froody]

It's important to note that in a color digicam each "pixel" only senses 1 color. The NASA cam is a black and white, and to make color they take 3 shots with different filters. This makes it equivalent to a consumer 3MP camera.
They also have a nice lens and a large sensor which helps as well.

Tim

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[ActionPlant]

No, I read it; obviously the sensors in my little 1MP cam won't be anything near what's in the pancam, but I can do something about the lens. Grab an eye doc friend who can get some decent prescription-ground lenses and go for the stereo effect. I'm not sure; one might have to write a small program to make it work, but it could be fun to see the results.

The NASA guys had to start somewhere. Their biggest advantage will be the sensors, but there's no reason we can't replicate the rest. If one wanted to go all-out, it might even be feasable to use an array from a high-mp camera and configure it to use multiple sensors to produce 1px.

Damon,

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nasa uses a 1MP camera but 3 filters. The 3 filters are combined to give you a color image.

Consumer 1MP have the same number of pixles buy each pixle has only 1 filter. The image is then interpolated to get a true color image.

Even if your optics and ccd were the same quality as Nasa's you would still only have 1/3 the resolution.

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[Fr33z0r]

I'd imagine it's more to do with radiation hardening, they could have, for a paltry sum, put a top-of the range con/prosumer camera up there and if it broke, no big deal, but it wouldn't survive outside the protection of Earth's atmosphere, the smaller alectronics would be fried by radiation from the sun in no time. Radiation hardening is great, but a difficult, complicated, "fiddly" procedure, so basically all the tech on the shuttles are a lot less advanced than the stuff we take for granted here on Earth. They wouldn't survive space if they weren't.

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[iamanatom]

It's the lens. The optics in a high street digital camera are generally terrible. A simple test of how good a lens is is to look at how big it is! Seriously. The bigger and more impressive looking the lens is the better it is likely to be. (I am a photographer.) Get your 1Mega pixel camera, rip off the lens and replace it with a really good standard lens from a Mamiya or Hassleblad medium format camera and you might get somewhere. except that a medium format lens focuses the light on to a much larger area of the film plane than the lens on a digital does and at a further distance away from the rear element. So a standard lens would give you an _extreme_ telephoto. Except, that (as it says in the article) a quality CCD has much larger pixels so the CCD in your cheap 1MP camera would be much less light sensitive. In other words, good luck but it's not worth bothering.

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[tyfoon]

Good point about the testing, but larger MP cameras have been around for a while but have been extremely expensive.

It's surprising that they wouldn't work directly with a manufacturer to use a higher MP camera.

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[RigMonkey]

"Perhaps I'll dust my old 1MP camera off and see if I can do anything similar."

You're going to send your old Sony Mavica to Mars?!?!?!?!?!

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[magarity]

I'll dust my old 1MP camera off and see if I can do anything similar

I want to see you send your old 1MP camera to Mars, too! Can I come to the launch?

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[angst_ridden_hipster]

There's also the limiting factor of CCD resolution. Having a lens that can resolve 500 lines per millimeter doesn't do you much good if your CCD has pixels that are on the order of that size (or does Nyquest make that within a factor of two?).

Anyway, putting a really high quality lens on a consumer 1 Megapixel CCD would work for certain focal lengths, but it's not the solution people are looking for.

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[FrostedWheat]

I'd say the biggest limit on the size of the images is the bandwidth to Earth. The links are getting faster but still nothing compared to a typical DSL line.

One thing I've been wondering, and maybe someone out there knows more. What kind of image compression are they using?

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[joggle]

As far as mission-critical micro-electronics (like CPUs or CCDs), bigger is better for radiation-resistance. That's why many spacecraft still use 286 - 486 chips because greater speed isn't needed, are cheaper to radiation-harden and are less complicated (harder to break) than new chips. In the case of CCDs, it is mentioned in the article that lenses need to be created with greater precision for high-resolution CCDs than lower resolution ones. I'm sure this wouldn't be a problem for NASA, so I would guess they went with the lower resolution CCD due to the larger size of each sensor and because it met the mission requirements. They don't mention this in the article, but the rover is very bandwidth-limited, so it wouldn't be possible to send back any more information than it already is anyways.

They mentioned that the design process of the Huble's CCDs at a resolution of 800 x 800 contributed to the current mass production of consumer CCD cameras, so I don't think they are afraid of pushing the envelope if it is needed to meet mission requirements.

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[JoeBuck]

Your old 1 MP camera probably has a crappy little plastic lens, not the high-quality optics that NASA is using. Also, the CCD light collectors in your 1 MP camera are far smaller than the ones in the NASA camera.

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[Ianoo]

Whatever it is, I'm pretty sure it's lossless. The pictures (no matter how snazzy they look) are intended for scientific research. There wouldn't be much point spending millions on optics to ruin pictures with decompression artefacts.

As for the actual encoding -- considering the article states that the cameras don't work like normal cameras and instead red, green, blue components are built up separately -- I'd say it's something NASA cooked up just for these probes.

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[joggle]

I know it is a lossless format, so it obviously isn't JPEG. I would guess that they are using some form of RLE (run-length encoding), perhaps combined with a Huffman table for the shading values. I wonder what the pixel-depth is.

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[Lumpy]

dont be suprised. I have a old 2mp canon that blows away the 4-5 megapixel kodak, casio, and other low end cameras.

pixels mean nothing when your optics are junk.

This is how a Canon XL-1 NTSC camcorder shoots better video than the current HD camcorders.... the lens makes all the difference.

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[Anonymous Coward]

does anyone else think this guy is weird? He doesnt seem to understand simple concepts such as "no, it wont be the same no matter what bizarre scheme you hatch".

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to send the parent poster to Mars. He is an twit - and the Earth would be better off without him on it. Let him go play with his fucked up little camera on Mars.

Hopefully the fuckin rover will run his dead ass over and take a pic of the blessed event. :/

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[TehHustler]

Surely when you're dealing with pictures of this clarity with so many different colours, run length encoding is useless?

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[FrostedWheat]

I know it is a lossless format

I would have thought this to, but what got my attention was the way it handles missing data. The large black boxes are not solid, but have blurry edges. A lossless codec wouldn't normally have that.

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[Mod Me God]

Perhaps it is a blocking of non-public data on the lossless format and then lossy encoding. I don't know, just speculative conjecture.

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[jovlinger]

huh? To get stereo, you need separation. You could do this with a couple of prisms, or maybe the biggest fresnel lens you ever saw, but why not just move the camera sideways between shots?

If your camera can take several pix in a row, use that, and simply move the camera laterally during the shooting (assumes you have fast shutter time).

Lastly, no. As I understand it, a CMOS sensor cut into 1000x1000 pixels will give you "better" pixels than the same die at 2000x2000 pixels, and coupling the pixels 2x2. This has several causes:

1) you can only average your combined pixels after sampling: thus you get quantisation noise (and hypothetically phase interferernce, although I've never heard anyone comment on this)

2) if you couple 2x2 pixels, you will get 1xR + 2xG + 1B pixels. Most pixels will be predominantly one of these colors, removing the other 3(2 for G) from the picture. This also means that a blue photon heading towards the 2x2 metapixel must hit the 1/4 area which can see it, else it is lost.

3) (I don't quite get this one. As close as I understand it:) The size of the sensor feature size is coming close to the wavelength of light: Sony's new 8mp sensor is 0.008 m long, with 3000 pixels. That makes each pixel 2.6e-6 m. Compare with Red light, at a wavelength of 0.7e-7 m. Each sensor is three wavelengths wide(!). This apparently means that you can't usefully use an fstop higher than 11ish on the new sony f828. Search photo.net for a technical discussion.

4) I guess that we also get effects from the fact that each pixel sensor is basically in a well, and the smaller the pixel becomes, the harder it becomes for a photon to hit the sensor, rather than the well wall. I never hear this discussed either

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be so bitter and twisted fuck-knuckle... Maybe you could take a trip to Mars and find a sense of humour.

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[SirDaShadow]

I know it is a lossless format, so it obviously isn't JPEG.

I don't understand why Jpeg 2000, which has a lossless option (which beats the crap out of TIFF) is not popular. Can anyone please tell me why? The only widespread app using it is the Yahoo Messenger Webcam (about 1-2 kbyte/s normal mode and 10-15kbyte/s "super" mode)

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[Heidistein]

Perhaps I'll dust my old 1MP camera off and see if I can do anything similar.

Yess! Lets build a marslander! I'm in!

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[Barbarian]

If that is the case, how is a 3.2 MP such as the Canon PowerShot A70 able to produce 2048x1536 full color images? That is, each pixel has r,g, and b values. 2048x1536 = 3145728, so it would seem that a 3.2 MP digital camera for consumers actually has three colors sensed per pixel...

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[topham]

It's called interpolation, and for each and every camera you will have to read the specifications in detail to be certain they are not using interpolation.

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I find digicam lenses to be quite decent much of the times (such as in cameras by Canon, Nikon, Sony and Olympus). Remember, it is much easier to make small high quality lenses than a large high quality lenses.

A medium format Zeiss lens may have better contrast than those tiny digicam lenses but I doubt it is any sharper. And as you can see on photodo.com, good medium format lenses are most often less sharp than decent 35mm lenses.
I'd love a large-format lens that's as sharp as those better digicam lenses but I guess it would be [much] too heavy and expensive for me.

It's the small multi-megapixel CCDs in digicams that I can't stand.

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[topham]

It's not popular because you can't get a good library for free.

Most other formats are 'good enough', so why work with something new?

jpeg2000 is SLOW too. Even on high-end machines, it feels like jpg on a 386. It is impressive though. I have a highres picture I took which I took with a friends EOS Digital Rebel, I compressed with with jpeg2000 to under 200K and then visually compared them zoomed in. Was amazing, there were few noticable differences even when zoomed way in. (obviously wasn't using lossless option).

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[froody]

They use some fancy math to interpolate the colors that are missing from the neighbors. A good description of the arrays is at
dpreview.

Tim

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[tyfoon]

the rover is very bandwidth-limited - anyone know what the bandwidth is?

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[matfud]

It makes it equivelent to a four MP camera. Most
CCD colour cameras have four real sensors per
pixel not the three you would assume. The colour mask is something like

R B
B G

Apparently it helps to ovecome the poor
sensitivity that most commercial CCD's have to
blue colours. (Although there are other techniques
and colour masks)

matfud

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually its significantly better than a 3MP consumer. A consumer sensor uses a bayer pattern which leads to a significant loss of sharpness in the final image, since the color sensors are in physically different locations (close but not close enough). The Foveon sensor addresses this problem directly. In consumer terms, its probably 5 MP equiv.

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

It varies depending on whether it's transmitting to Earth or to Mars orbit and possibly varies by some other factors, but it's slower than a cheap DSL line and often slower than a 56k modem. I think the highest number I ever saw was around 152 kbits/second.

Tim

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[Eight 01]

The article is clueless technically. The panorama cam takes hundreds of 1 megapixel images and stitches them together to produce the panoramas that have been published on the web.

Anyone can acheive a similar effect with their digital camera by taking enough pictures and stitching them together with software.

To get an idea of what the raw ccd images look like from the panoramic cam, check out the raw image gallery from JPL:

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/spiri t_ p011.html

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[SirNarfsALot]

Each pixel on the sensor is dedicated to one color each, and typically a bayer pattern is used, which looks like this:
RGRGRGRG
GBGBGBGB
RGRGRGRG
GBGBGBGB
The eye is more sensitive to green, so green is captured in greater detail. Lower detail in reds and even lower detail in blues is acceptable to the human eye, and in most cases this sort of setup looks pretty good once the data is processed and interpolation is performed.
But considering that JPEG would throw away the extra red and blue chrominance detail anyway, a consumer camera using a chip that captures red, green, and blue for each pixel would be pretty pointless right now given the fact that uncompressed formats are too inconvenient (RAW conversion and/or huge file size with RAW and TIFF) for most peoples' purposes.
But NASA is not using JPEG compression, and their needs are considerably different from an earth photgrapher's.
I am still puzzled by the article, though, considering that any picture at that resolution, reduced to 1MP, would never be "IMAX quality."

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[tommy_teardrop]

The resolution itself is much less important than other things, like sensitivity to light, to the weight/power ratio. The CCD they are using has to cover a wider wavelength range than the average digital camera. If you look at all the professional telescope instruments, they are just now reaching into the 2 megapixel range, but I've used IR instruments with 256x256 pixels effectively. These instruments can count photons individually. I imagine that the Spirit cameras are found somewhere between this extreme level of accuaracy and the average digital camera.

The other main reason for keeping the resolution down of course, is that all this has to be beamed back, and the higher the resolution, the longer it takes to send an individual picture.

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[Matrix2110]

"so I don't think they are afraid of pushing the envelope if it is needed to meet mission requirements."

I would think you could do some radical overclocking in the sub-zero temperatures involved.

I also just found out (Fact checking) that Mars atmosphere is 95.3% C02. (I should know this but I'm getting old) That is almost worse than vacuum to us people on Earth. Great for the frozen carbonated beverage industry however.

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[Anonymous Coward]

Colour value is not the same thing as image detail. On the rover image detail == colour detail, which is not the case with consumer camera's because human eyes are poor at picking up colour detail.

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[arm]

Got this as an email the other day on my University of Minnesota account...it talks about the compression used. Haven't read up on it, though.

"The Mars Exploration Rover (MER) is currently landing a pair of rovers on Mars (one landed last week and the other will be landing soon).
Well over half of the bits transmitted from the rovers will consist of compressed image data gathered from the unprecedented nine cameras
on-board each rover. This compression is based on the ICER and the LOCO [1] image compression technologies. LOCO was developed by Dr. Marcelo Weinberger and Dr. Gadiel Seroussi from Hewlett-Packard Laboratories and Prof. Sapiro from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department (while he was at the HP Labs before joining the University).

The JPL/NASA hardware implementation of LOCO on-board the rovers is used when maximum geometric and radiometric fidelity is required. The LOCO technology, patented by Sapiro, Seroussi, and Weinberger at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, is also the core of the international standard JPEG-LS for
the lossless and near-lossless compression of still images."

[1] M. J. Weinberger, G, Seroussi, and G. Sapiro, ``The LOCO-I lossless image compression algorithm: Principles and standardization into JPEG-LS,'' IEEE Trans. Image Processing 9, pp. 1309-1324, 2000.)

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[joggle]

I would think you could do some radical overclocking in the sub-zero temperatures involved.

While that seems obvious, cooling is actually a major issue for spacecraft. The reason it is a problem is that the only way to cool the hardware is by radiating the heat into space, so there needs to be cooling systems onboard the spacecraft to transfer the heat to a radiator. So any overclocking would need even larger radiators, which given their weight probably isn't worth it. I forgot about that, but this is another reason to use the slower CPUs -- lower power consumption and thus less heat produced. On Mars with its atmosphere, I would guess that cooling is much easier.

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[Shanep]

The article is clueless technically. The panorama cam takes hundreds of 1 megapixel images and stitches them together to produce the panoramas that have been published on the web.

Exactly. That "article" is completely wrong on most counts and is obviously written by some tech illiterate who has misinterpretted what he has been told by NASA.

Using a 1MP CCD to capture 9 images for a 3x3 stitched matrix (for example), could have been acheived with one 9MP CCD.

"NASA's Spirit Rover is providing a lesson to aspiring digital photographers: Spend your money on the lens, not the pixels."

Who on Earth : ) wants to painstakingly take multiple photos and then stitch them together every bloody time?! Just buy a high MP camera and be glad that you'll never feel the need to do that.

Imagine the photos from Mars if the CCD was 5MP and good stitching was being done. I know (and knew before reading the silly article) that bigger CCD pixels would result in greater sensitivity. But I wonder if this is the true reason NASA wanted larger pixels. Do they really need hyper sensitive CCD's on Mars? I would have thought that they were more interested in the reduced noise that comes with larger sensors.

Re:I was honestly surprised.

[wyohman]

Can you provide linkage to show that NASA uses 286 - 486 CPUs? I had heard this before but I can't find any information on it.

Cheers.

Unwashed Masses...?

[funny-jack]

The hardcore digital photographers in the crowd will probably find the article to be only a teaser on the technical specs, but the rest of us in the unwashed masses should find it interesting.

What does having a six-digit Slashdot UID have to do with digital photography knowledge?

Re:Unwashed Masses...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Six digit IDs, especially over 500k, and generally over 600k tend to come off as unintelligent. I would have said 'bloody worthless', but either way. They all came for games.slashdot anyway, you know.

Re:Unwashed Masses...?

[Andorion]

I resemble that statement =(

~Berj

Re:Unwashed Masses...?

[cujo_1111]

How about those people who used to have a 5 digit ID and left the job and the email address he signed up with and couldn't change it...

Or it could be like ICQ where instead of trying to remember your old username and password, you just crate another ID.

Then again, I could be just fulfilling what you said right there...

Re:Unwashed Masses...?

[quantaman]

Since geeks motivated enough to get a new account just so they can make that joke because their old account has a sub six digit UID are also experienced enough to have learned more about digital photography.

Original

[Gherald]

Why not link directly to the original article?

Re:Original

[Some Clown]

Sorry 'bout that. I happened to see the MSNBC one first and had already added that link. Does it really matter though?

Re:Original

[wideBlueSkies]

Dude,

That has to be the greatest sig ever! I'm grinning even as I type this. :)

wbs.

Re:Original

[Gherald]

Thanks =)

Re:Original

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol, 10 to 1 thats gonna get metamoderated as "Unfair".

Mods these days.. *shakes head*

Re:Original

[hey]

Thanks very much. Some of the stuff on that *MS*NBC site didn't work in Mozilla.

Re:Original

[elvey]

Ditto for the space.com site.
Lots of the pages don't work in Mozilla. Grr.

Re:Original

[Anonymous Coward]

the guy who moderated these 2 posts down is an asshole.

hard to believe you wasted points on this innocent conversation shit tube.

Re:Original

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, we don't want to slashdot space. Then the aliens would be really pissed at us.

Re:Original

[Gherald]

It looks fine to me in Opera 7.23 and Firebird 0.6

Re:Original

[Gherald]

But what good is karma if you can't burn it?

Re:Original

[wideBlueSkies]

True.

But I kind of like moderating once a week. It's nice to read the threads and help 'push up' good posts.

I've probably got enough Karma now that an undeserved mod down like that won't affect me too badly. But I still look at it like this: if someone steals $1 from me, it still pisses me off, not because of the value of the money, but because someone got over on me.

Whatever. Anyway, it's cool 'meeting' you. Have a good one.

wbs.

Specs

[nairnr]

I think it is amazing that to see what it can do. It is important to realize that the components we think about aren't always what makes the most difference. I tried out a 3Mpix camera that was utter crap because the lens on it was a small piece of plastic, then I compared it to an SLR digital camera that took stunning photos at every resolution. Quality.

It is also interesting to see how it produces color photos. Instead of using a 3 color sensor, it uses a B&W camera with 3 colour filters that recombine into a colour image. This is calibrated by a colour wheel on the rover itself.

Neat stuff

Re:Specs

[angst_ridden_hipster]

It is also interesting to see how it produces color photos.

This is how virtually all consumer digital cameras work (more or less). They paint a pattern of color filters over the CCD. Then they use interpolation, based on the relative intensities, to figure out the most likely color of each pixel.

Different vendors use different masks, and there is a lot of debate about the best approach. See DP Review's Glossary section for more information.

Re:Specs

[Dynedain]

About 100 years ago a Russian photographer used the same technique to generate color photograps.

Re:Specs

[cgenman]

It's in the interpolation stage that most consumer cameras turn to junk. The fact that the mars rover takes a picture using an identical array (rather than a very-similar-array) with 3 different filters is what makes the image crisp. It's totally impractical in the consumer arena, however, because people would need to stand exactly still while their camera took 3 pictures.

Multi-layered sensors are in the works, however, one of which has been slashdotted. This would provide true image color with no interpolation, but failed to materialize in the year promised (last one).

If anyone has the slashdot link from a few years back, I'm sure it would be relevant to this discussion.

Re:Specs

[angst_ridden_hipster]

Well, there's the Foveon X3 chip, which is truly color-sensitive. I haven't seen any output from it, but the reviews are mixed. I think Sigma was going to release a camera based on the chip.

It would be possible to use the three CCD configuration some video cameras used, even in a consumer/still digital camera, except that that increases size, weight, and cost.

Re:Specs

[SunBug]

Sigma has released two camera bodies based on the Foveon X3 chip: the SD-9 and the SD-10

I haven't seen any reviews of them either. The idea is great, and it seems to cut down on the moire patter.

Re:Specs

[Anonymous Coward]

"It is also interesting to see how it produces color photos. Instead of using a 3 color sensor, it uses a B&W camera with 3 colour filters that recombine into a colour image. This is calibrated by a colour wheel on the rover itself."

It's pretty common method for product photography. Plenty of medium format backs have this capability. The first color photographs did also employ this method.

Re:Specs

[triumphDriver]

Remember since it has to take 3 pics to get a color image that is not really good for catpuring motion, and a those cheap consumer camera do decent job of this.
Right tool for the right job at the right price.

Re:Specs

[donutello]

It's in the interpolation stage that most consumer cameras turn to junk. The fact that the mars rover takes a picture using an identical array (rather than a very-similar-array) with 3 different filters is what makes the image crisp. It's totally impractical in the consumer arena, however, because people would need to stand exactly still while their camera took 3 pictures.

The other advantage of using the multi-filter technique is that the focal length of a lens depends upon the wavelength of light passing through it. What it means is that no lens is able to focus the entire spectrum perfectly. Of course this is something that affects even film-based cameras and there are ways to make lenses which seem like they don't have this weakness but the multi-filter technique will always yield superior images when the camera and the subject are perfectly still.

Re:Specs

[crayz]

As others have sort of pointed out, this is in fact quite different. A 6 megapixel consumer digicam has something like 3 million green sensors, 1.5 million blue, and 1.5 million red(IIRC). This is far different than Spirit, which has 1 million sensors and takes the picture three times(getting an effective 3MP shot)

Re:Specs

[addaon]

If I were deciding on a photo system for a Mars rover, motion blur would be a compromise I would be more than willing to make.

Re:Specs

[p0d]

The quality off of the X3 chips are decent, check the DPReview website, for the reviews.

What is hobbling the Sigmas is the fact that they are a blip on the camera body scene...everyone has Nikon or Canon glass...I think Foveon would have done better to fit their sensor to a Nikon or Canon body...we'd see true 10 megapixel X3 sensors by now.

Re:Specs

[Matrix2110]

I am reminded of that favorite movie War of the Worlds. That trinary optic system the invaders from Mars used for vision just might be the new future of consumer electronics.

I find it ironic.

Re:Specs

[Ed Avis]

Bob Atkins explains the importance of sensor size for image quality in digital cameras.

Re:Specs

[ryusen]

I was not that impressed by the review of the SD9.
It seemed IIRC, that the x3 was shrp, but wasn't as good on colour accuracy.

And you are correct. most people int eh DSLR market are Nikon and Canon. I coudl possibly see Nikon doing this, but Canon makes it's own sensors and has put a lot into their R&D already to abandon it. I've been told, one of the reasons Canon could release their DSLR's cheaper is because they make theirown sensors, as opposed to Nikon who buys them from someone else.

Dang,

[pvt_medic]

So i wasted all my money on a nice camera. Should just get one of those from Ritz Cameras

Hmm..

[Savatte]

Somehow I don't see the phrase "shake it like a 1-megapixel digital camera" being as catchy

Re:Hmm..

[NetNinja]

Buahha , That was funny. I could never be as witty.

Interesting, but..

[xankar]

High quality images are good for PR, but what I really want to know is how it extracts information from the environment, how this information is being used, and whether or not we found anything we didn't expect to find.

Re:Interesting, but..

[jmh_az]

It extracts data by looking at the return levels at the various wavelenghts of the filters, among other things. With image processing software like IRAF you can get an amazing amount of information out of an image. Also, conventional comsumer CCD cameras use one CCD device with a RGB patterned color filter literally painted onto the face of the CCD to get red, green and blue. High-end cameras use three CCD's with seperate filters in front of each imaging device and splitter prisms to direct the light. Since things like weight and complexity are issues when building spacecraft, they accomplish the same thing as the high-end cameras here on earth by using one CCD and a filter wheel. This approach also allows them to do other things, such as take images through polarizers, or have magnification if they need it, and all in one camera package. And, last but not least, these cameras are tested and calibrated to within an inch of their lives before they ever leave the ground, so the researchers know exactly what the dark current (electronic noise), flat field (pixal responsiveness across the entire CCD) and defect characteristics for the CCD are. This information is then used to subtract out a lot of the noise and imperfections, leaving as much of the original data for analysis as possible. That analysis is the stuff of research papers like this one.

Hope that was useful.

Re:Interesting, but..

[Anonymous Coward]

High quality images are good for PR, but what I really want to know is how it extracts information from the environment

In one of the images of the airbag impressions, I see something shiny (it may be a piece of lander foil or the like), and not far from it is a yellowish, flat rock. Plenty of interesting mysteries already. I'll see if I can find a link.

$400,000,000?

[poppageek]

I am not trying to be negative, I think what they are doing is great and long overdue. Can't wait till we have Rovers on other planets. But why did it cost $400 million? I've read about what Rover is and how it was built and what it does. I am sure it was expensive to build but $400 million? Does that include the cost of getting it there?

Re:$400,000,000?

[pvt_medic]

its not only the cost of building such an item but the process of getting it certified for such task. You not only have to build it, but then have teams of review committies look over it again and again, so you dont have something stupid like a conversion error.

Re:$400,000,000?

[Erwos]

That's including the R&D costs. Ergo, the next rover will be far cheaper, because they've just got to build another one, not figure out how to make it in the first place.

-Erwos

Re:$400,000,000?

[knitting fool]

Unfortunately, $400,000,000 doesn't appear to cover it. According to this article, the cost of the project was $820 million.

Re:$400,000,000?

[nairnr]

Well, it isn't like you can head down to Radio Shack and pick up a functional interplanetary robot now can you? You are talking about one off ( or two off in this case) The second rover will cost half to make more than likely due to parts being already made for the first one. I mean think about how much R&D has to go into building a craft capable of surviving and thriving after being blasted off from earth, traveling through the radiation of space, hit a spot on a planet after many months of travel. After that you have to go through reentry and hit the ground at 60MPH, with all sorts of high precision instruments functional.

Quality is expensive, the survival rate of craft going to Mars is less than 1/3. They tried to cut costs, but that leads to failure. Build them with enough attention that you don't throw $3-400MM away after years of effort...

Re:$400,000,000?

[PhuCknuT]

That's because they did it twice, the second rover lands a week from saturday.

And the 400M (each) includes all of the research, developement, construction, launch costs, operations, radio telescope time, etc until the end of the mission.

Re:$400,000,000?

[ad0gg]

Expensive compare to what? B-1 Bomber is 1.2 billion a piece, F22 is $122 million. Communication sattelites can range from $100 million and up. And the R&D costs can spread accross multiple units, rovers only had two units to spread across.

Re:$400,000,000?

[Sexy Bern]

Not the first time it's happened, either

Re:$400,000,000?

[poppageek]

Oh, well I guess I'll take this stuff back to Radio Shack. I was gonna build a Rover and try and sell it to NASA for $4,000,000. Nice little profit for me and big savings for them........ ;-)

Re:$400,000,000?

[djtripp]

I'm pretty sure $400,000 includes just about everything, R&D, rent, man hours, to a percentage of fuel that was used to launch it, and the construction of the plaque that's on it. And of course the few millions to cover their Christmas party and Bawls budget, and the recent implementation of the Vogon Intergalactic Bypass tolls along the way.

Re:$400,000,000?

[morcheeba]

$400 million? Does that include the cost of getting it there?

No, it doesn't. NASA engineers saved up some frequent flyer miles accrued on the space shuttle and the space station, and got a free trip to mars. Next, they'll be saving up for a round-trip and I've heard that they are soliciting milage donations from the public.

Put another way, $400 million is about a dollar for each american. Have you gotten your dollar's worth of entertainment yet? (Or $2.30 if the price is $810 mil)

To compare, bush's little iraq war is going to cost 100-200 Billion dollars and over 500 coallition lives so far. Do you expect to get your $1400 worth of oil/entertainment from that?

Re:$400,000,000?

[ucblockhead]

It costs more partially because it has to be more reliable. If the rover fails onsite, you can't exactly exchange it for a new one.

It also has to survive both the G-forces of launch and landing and radiation levels far above what is seen on Earth.

Re:$400,000,000?

[Bigfishbowl]

Well, look at it this way . . . if you break down the cost across the entire population of the US, that amounts to about $1.37 each (compared to the $97 billion = $297.95 each for Iraq). So for less then the price of a beer at a bar, I get to see Mars. Works for me.

Re:$400,000,000?

[Eivind]

You forgot about surviving being dropped from a dozen meters, wrapped in air-bags and bouncing an estimated 10-15 times before coming to a rest. :-)

Re:$400,000,000?

[raider_red]

It's been more entertaining than the last movie I saw...

Just remember that building space-worthy hardware is expensive, and launching it is more expensive. Also, keep in mind that Motorola blew through $3 billion putting up a low-earth-orbit constellation that almost no one uses. (Of course it did create my first job, post university.)

Re:$400,000,000?

[morcheeba]

Yep, I agree.

The satellites I used to work on were $1 mil, and the rockets were $10 mil*, with the result being an extremely simple LEO low bandwidth store-and-forward satellite. The mars rover is definitely 36x cooler!

(* discount price because it was an untested rocket. It blew up, of course! The diamond-looking emblem on the top of the rocket? it's a "GEM" for GEMSTAR- "G"lobal "E"lectronic "M"ail)

Re:$400,000,000?

[kingdon]

It includes all the people (engineers, scientists, etc). That's to build the rover, to launch it, to operate it on the cruise to Mars, to operate it on Mars (see those rooms full of people on TV? Multiply by how much each is making), to run the radio dishes and communications hardware, to analyze the data, etc. I don't know whether the launcher itself would be included, but that's only $50 million or less (closer numbers are probably buried somewhere at JSC or other sites with launcher prices).

Having said all that, $800 million for two rovers is a bit more pricey than Mars Pathfinder, Mars Odyssey, the Stardust comet mission, etc, which were more in the $200-300 million range or so (for a single spacecraft, though). Some say that NASA cut corners a bit too far (as seen by the failures of Mars Polar Lander and Mars Climate Observer); others say they merely failed to reinvent themselves in terms of finding more efficient ways to do things.

Re:$400,000,000?

[MadCow42]

Actually, make that 3-off... include the one that they have at the NASA lab for testing with (they rehearsed the roll-off from the platform with it).

The cost of the actual materials and construction is probably 1% of the $400M figure.

MadCow.

Re:$400,000,000?

[Mc_Anthony]

$400 million is a drop in the bucket (actually, less then that, when you consider America's GDP. You really should be surprised it *only* cost $400 M.

Re:$400,000,000?

[Anonymous Coward]

$400 million == one buck a citizen? Look, the US may be big, but not that big. That actual population size is 280 million people, which translates to $1.40 a citizen. Still agree it's cheap, but don't make it cheaper than it already is.

Re:$400,000,000?

[morcheeba]

Ah, I was going with a 350Mil estimate we toss around at work. Looks like 290Mil is closer. Thanks - I used to think it was 250Mil and they made fun of me... (I forget what evidence we used) I guess I was pretty close after all.

Pictures

[schnits0r]

I dunno, That would suck if all Spirit's pictures had a finger in the bottom corner of them like all mine do.

Re:Pictures

[nucal]

Actually, it would be fantastic if all Spirit's pictures had a finger in the bottom corner!

Re:Pictures

[Skyfire]

I'd have to disagree with you on that one. I mean really, do we want our top engineers in the country leaving loose fingers laying about?

Re:Pictures

[pvt_medic]

or even better Fake Picture

Re:Pictures

[john_smith_45678]

Unless of course it was the middle finger, which would indicate that the Martians are indeed hostile.

Re:Pictures

[Tablizer]

Unless of course it was the middle finger, which would indicate that the Martians are indeed hostile.

Or, it could mean "hello" in Martian. Didn't it originally mean "I want to penetrate you with my [bleep]" on Earth? Same as "hello" more or less.....the intense sweaty kind.

Re:Pictures

[Jerf]

Nah, that's too cultural.

It's when they flip you the seventh finger you need to worry.

Humans to the moon...

[richard_za]

Humans to the moon (1969)
Digital cameras to mars (2004)
Internet Fridges to pluto (2010)?

Is this progress?

Re:Humans to the moon...

[pvt_medic]

of course not, your forgetting
Humans to the moon (eta 2015-2020)

Re:Humans to the moon...

[Mod Me God]

Internet Fridges to pluto (2010)?

All those IPv6 address have to be used for somthing!

Amazing

[Hangin10]

I didn't think it would be 1MP camera either..

How many people watched the Nova show about
Spirit? It was absolutely fascinating how many
obsticles have to be overcome and how much it
must cost (yep, that's where the $400 Mil comes
in, I suppose...). At the end, it really gives
you a good feeling when you finally see the rocket
liftoff. :)

Re:Amazing

[Mod Me God]

ok... no personal offense and totally OT, but why do you use such piece-of-shit line breaks???

Courier (or similar) I can face, but whay is the point of splitting a line over several lines. Kinda like Outlook's treatment of plain text emails (they HAVE to be split somewhere 72 and 112 chars) which really pisses me off (plain text emails on tunderbird on Windows need no such breaks).

Re:Amazing

[Hangin10]

First of all, I like fixed-width font, dunno
why just do.

The reason I use these "piece-of-shit" line breaks
is because I like properly formatted text. At some
point I could indent my paragraphs as well. This
just makes it slightly easier to read as the eyes
don't have to go all the way across the screen.
(that was BS, wasn't it ;)).

I'm also paranoid/obsessive about horizontal
scrollbars, even though they are likely impossible
around here.

Tang

[dreamer98]

So, digital camera's and Tang are the practical spin-offs from the space program. cool.

Re:Tang

[pooman]

you're forgeting about space blankets and freeze dried icecream.

Re:Tang

[pvt_medic]

Tactical to Pratical

It's All About The Optics

[raider_red]

Resolution in cameras (both digital and film) is really determined by optics. By taking pictures of a smaller area and stitching them together, they can probably get better pics than most pros get with their high end Digital SLRs, because they've put more money into the optics than the sensor. Also, the higher density CCDs and CMOS sensors going into digital cameras now tend to be more prone to noise than some of the very high quality, lower density models.

Also, remember that the cameras in the rover had to go through a lot more testing than a typical consumer camera, so it's probably using three, four, or even five year old components in the imaging systems.

Re:It's All About The Optics

[nuggz]

A pro using a high end Digital SLR should be using a pro lens.
They are expensive, but they do have the quality.
Actually compared to any point and shoot camera, or entry/mid level digital cameras the consumer quality SLR lens is likely much better.
I was surprised how much more detail and contrast I got from my SLR, it made other pictures appear quite poor in comparison.

That being said, you only notice the quality when you compare, I love my digital for snapshots.

Re:It's All About The Optics

[pvt_medic]

remember how you can build a 1 gigapixel shot out of a bunch of lower resolution pictures.

Re:It's All About The Optics

[Anonymous Coward]

By taking pictures of a smaller area and stitching them together, they can probably get better pics than most pros get with their high end Digital SLRs, because they've put more money into the optics than the sensor.

You can use a similar trick back on Earth, although you don't have the advantage of multiple, narrow-band filters which can be used for further analysing the geology.

The 360 degree panorama images we've seen from Mars so far aren't the best they can do:

"This is a 360-degree view," said Michael Malin, a Spirit science team member and president of Malin Space Science Systems. "This is multiple thousands of pixels high and many tens of thousands of pixels wide. In fact, being shown here is something that we assembled at one half the resolution and one quarter the number of pixels because the sheer number of pixels was slowing down our machine in getting it ready for you today. We felt it as better to get it out and we'll show you a little later on, maybe in the next couple of days, a better view of it. This view in itself will jam any download you ever tried to perform."

Re:It's All About The Optics

[Anonymous Coward]

By taking pictures of a smaller area and stitching them together, they can probably get better pics than most pros get with their high end Digital SLRs

Exactly. NASA can take advantage of the fact that the subject of the pictures (Martian landscape) doesn't change all that quickly and the photographer (rover) has a very steady hand. By capturing an image a little at a time, rover can use more error-resistant components than your average 3.2MP happy snap camera.

Re:It's All About The Optics

[jesser]

By taking pictures of a smaller area and stitching them together

Doesn't that require the subject to be still?

Re:It's All About The Optics

[Anonymous Coward]

You can also do cunning tricks with moving the camera fractions of a pixel to generate 'super-resolution' images - I'm almost afraid to think what the images from Spirit could be like with this technique.

They've talked about using it to take pictures of the hills a few kilometres away - even if the rover doesn't reach them, they should still get some very impressive images of them.

Re:It's All About The Optics

[jandrese]

Fortunatly for NASA, the rocks aren't going anywhere. This reminds me of one guy who built a digital camera out of an old flatbed scanner. It took several seconds to take a shot, and one of the shots he had was of his garage door...while it was opening and closing. The door ended up looking triangular in his shot.

Re:It's All About The Optics

[Anonymous Coward]

I paid less than $50 for my 50mm f/1.8 lens which is sharper than most lenses of 'pro' caliber. I guess nearly every pro photographer in the world has one or more 50mm lens.

Good long lenses are expensive though, as are zooms.

Re:It's All About The Optics

[Anonymous Coward]

"You can also do cunning tricks with moving the camera fractions of a pixel to generate 'super-resolution' images - I'm almost afraid to think what the images from Spirit could be like with this technique."

Some medium format backs do indeed employ this trick by shifting the CCD sensor a bit.

Re:It's All About The Optics

[nuggz]

Most 50/1.8 are pro quality for two reasons.
It is easy to make a 50mm lens.
It's the standard, volume makes them cheap enough to do well.

Re:It's All About The Optics

[Skipio]

50mm lenses are cheap because they are the easiest lenses to design. Because they are cheap they are the standard lens.

Re:It's All About The Optics

[nuggz]

I didn't say there wasn't a feedback loop.
Cheapest and easiest lens to design.
Add in that it is typically very high quality, of course they'll sell more.

Now if only I could get a cheap wide lens

Re:It's All About The Optics

[raider_red]

No kidding. I've been trying to get a good deal on a high quality 20mm off eBay for about two months now.

Re:It's All About The Optics

[jovlinger]

This is often done in X-ray radiology (one of those words may be redundant...). You take three Xrays simultaneously, which capture the image at slightly different sizes because they are different distances away. Scan them, resize them, and then you "register" them. Registration finds how each must be rotated and translated (basically a ... erm, this was several years ago ... 4x4 translation matrix).

We did this using a hierarchical least squares: start with a low res version of the picture. When you get a good registration, double the resolution, and do it again.

You can get subpixel accuracy if you're good about your interpolation.

None of this was novel: we merely implemented the work titled "subpixel registration for x-ray images" or somesuch. That paper wasn't too novel either, and I think it was published in a lesser journal (that's pure speculation, btw).

Other spectra

[d3m057h3n35]

Pictures in the visible spectrum sure are nice for us to look at and admire, but what about other electromagnetic spectra? Surely infrared, radio, microwave, x-ray, etc capabilities on this rover camera would be scientifically useful. I wonder if Spirit or Opportunity have any such capabilities. (I know they carry a mass spectrometer, but that ain't exactly a widefield camera...)

Re:Other spectra

[ActionPlant]

I was of the impression it had IR, but I could be wrong.

Damon,

My question

[Otter]

Sorry, I'm still confused by the discussion on the last Mars photography story, the crackpot complaining about the color in the images. The explanation here was interesting and explains why there are multiple filters in use but I still don't know the answer to the basic question:

If I were standing on the surface of Mars, what does it look like? Is the surface red to a human eye the way it looks in the most common pictures?

Re:My question

[coult]

When you look at Mars in the sky, it looks red doesn't it? Also, when you look at it through a telescope, it looks red. Ergo, one might expect it would look red when viewed close up as well.

Re:My question

[Anonymous Coward]

If I were standing on the surface of Mars, what does it look like? Is the surface red to a human eye the way it looks in the most common pictures?

It'll look pretty similar to the pictures, yes. The camera's been calibrated to give a fairly good idea of what things look like in visible light, and generations of Earth-based astronomers will attest to the fact that Mars does indeed look red.

View from Earth orbit.

Re:My question

[Raereth]

(Note: I'm no professional in the field, so if someone with actual credentials and experience comes along later, go with his/her answer.)

I'm not sure anyone's yet certain. Getting a picture which accurately represents what we'd see standing on Mars is more complex than one might think. For one, the visual cortex does some 'image processing' below conscious awareness, such as white balancing; since the color spectra of sunlight would be different on Mars' surface (as opposed to Earth's), that might change how things look. Dust in the air would have an affect, too, depending on the precise properties of the dust. And I think atmospheric pressure can actually alter color in some way; not sure if the air pressure at the landing site is different enough from that at sea level on Earth to make an appreciable difference, though.

There is a color wheel on this rover for use in determining proper color balance, but at first blush I don't think that would necessarily result in an image that shows what a human would see on Mars' surface. I imagine that such rebalancing would get something closer to what the ground on Mars would look like if it were transported en masse to the Earth. I'm not certain on this, though.

Anyone know if they've actually calibrated the photos with the color wheel yet?

Re:My question

[Skipio]

Beagle 2 simply had a small painting with known color values bolted in front of the camera to be used for calibration. I guess NASA does something similar.

Digital Photography On Mars

[archivis]

Good thing they don't have to run the film back to Earth to be developed. :)

What I would like to see out of this is someone taking a set of these photos, along with time/position data and making some spiffy 3D models of the lander enviroment.

Any takers?

Re:Digital Photography On Mars

[adpowers]

Maestro has that functionality built right in. They currently have one data pack released, with another likely today or tomorrow. The second data pack should be interesting. Since the rover is finally off the lander (allowing multiple perspectives) and they have gotten more time to download higher quality pics, the map should be more detailed.

Check it out!
adpowers

Actually

[bluegreenone]

Actually, it's only 1 megapixel because it's a cameraphone. Sprint donated the phone in exchange for showing off their new Martian-wide network. The lander just waits until 7pm so it can send home pictures using free nights and weekends. Unfortunately the budget killer is the shots from the rover since they incur roaming charges.

LOCO

[Anonymous Coward]

Discussion of Spirit camera uses LOCO

if (!ie){......}

[ExileOnHoth]

"Sorry, your browser is not compatible with this feature!"

@%**! MSnbc

Click on the "Interactive feature" if you don't know what I mean,

then curse microsoft,

then go straight to http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov to see the images without paying the microsoft tax. I vowed a long time ago to stop clicking on msnbc links.... sucker that I am to keep coming back for more...

Re:if (!ie){......}

[kevcol]

Here's the Flash element they wont let you see.

Filtered Colour

[cd-w]

The article states that the colour images were obtained by placing filters over the lens and then combining the results in software. The sensor on a regular digital camera has a pattern of pixels which capture either red, gree, or blue information.
This difference alone would account for the 3x quality of the images, as the sensor is essentially just greyscale.

Re:Filtered Colour

[djtripp]

Similar to the old color scanners, which had to make three passes to produce a 24bit color image, the camera is taking three shots(or so it would seem, 4 for a grey, unless they just use the green channel). There is probably not too much movement, except in a wind storm, so these 3 filters could (and apparently does) create a very nice pic. What Id like to see if the sensor is 8 or 16 bit, thus with the capacity of generating 48 bit color images. Most of those bits being red.

Artifical Stuff On Mars

[tds67]

But why have only a handful of pictures been released out of the 3,900 that have been taken? And why the scarcity of color images? Maybe it's because of pictures of artificial objects like these.

Re:Artifical Stuff On Mars

[Hangin10]

Where's the artificial object in that pic? All I see is a necktie...

Re:Artifical Stuff On Mars

[d3m057h3n35]

Are those really fake rocks? Interesting how they look so much like the real thing. Martian cilization must have been great indeed for them to be capable of such painstakingly accurate forgeries of pebbles...

Could be done much cheaper

[The_Rippa]

And why couldn't this all just be done with a TurboHopper and a hacked disposable digital camera?

Interplanetary Internet

[sm0yby]

Well, there's always the Interplanetary Internet.

Re:Interplanetary Internet

[richard_za]

Woah, that link is interesting - in the faq that they are planning a satelite system around mars.

1mp sensor and 3 color filters == 3mp consumer ccd

[remou]

Considering that consumer ccd's have pixels for
3 different colors and that the total count is
advertised, while in the rovers case it's just
1 million b/w pixel sensors and using 3 filters
in front of the lens and making 3 pictures and
mending them afterwards....

in PR speak the rovers camera is more of a 3mp camera anyway....

(kinda like the Foveon sensors)

so yeah, one BIG explanation for the quality.

The others being kick-ass lens (pros don't spend
1000s of $ for a lense for nothing), and a bigger
image sensor (each pixel is more light sensitive)

One Megapixel Dimensions?

[jeffy210]

Serious question here... the article says "One megapixel is a million pixels set up in an array equal to 1,000 by 1,000."

Is this like hard drives using one GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes or is 1MP truely 1,000 x 1,000 and not 1,024 x 1,024?

Re:One Megapixel Dimensions?

[calc]

1024x1024 would be 1MiP, not to be confused with 1 mips (millions of instructions per second).

Yea, those stupid extra i's are annoying.

Re:One Megapixel Dimensions?

[swtaarrs]

As many people before me have said and many people after me will undoubtedly say, the prefix mega- means million no matter where it's applied, so one megapixel is 1,000,000 pixels.

Re:One Megapixel Dimensions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most square one megapixel CCDs (such as this one) are in fact 1024 by 1024 pixels. Often, not all of the picture elements are used so the resulting image may very well be 1000x1000 pixels.

Re:One Megapixel Dimensions?

[mindriot]

Probably neither. My Canon PowerShot A70 shoots 2048x1536 = 3,145,728 pixels, and claims to have 3.2 megapixels. The specs say it has 3.34 million photo detectors, so it seems like Canon took the 'average' of these two numbers... much like for the A60 which claims 2.0 megapixels, and has in fact 1.92 million vs. 2.11 million.

So, aside from rounding for marketing purposes, it seems like the 'mega' is decimal (MPixels, not MiPixels).

Techno Zealots...

[huckda]

Many believe buying a better camera with greater megapixels etc will make them a better photographer. Sadly mistaken are they.

A great photographer can take an old Brownie and develop some GREAT photos...
Anyone can point and shoot a digital camera...but it really takes someone with talent to get a GOOD image using one.

The greatness of a digital camera is you can snap those 500 shots to get the 3 good ones and not worry about film and developing costs...

Professional wedding photographers shoot 300+ pics per event and rarely get better than 25% that come out with any sort of quality, but people buy them just the same because of 'who' is in the picture.

Anyway just a rant on about people who think the latest and greatest will actually help their choice of shots, lighting, and perception become better...

Re:Techno Zealots...

[NerveGas]

Many believe buying a better camera with greater megapixels etc will make them a better photographer.

I don't know a single person who thinks that.

On the other hand, since my camera only has about 1/3 of the resolution of my dye-sub printer, I know that I'll get higher-quality prints if I get a camera with more pixels. My photographic skills will, of course, be unchanged.

steve

Re:Techno Zealots...

[NerveGas]

Professional wedding photographers shoot 300+ pics per event and rarely get better than 25% that come out with any sort of quality

Well, there are photographers, and there are "photographers".

I know plenty in the "I'll shoot a bunch, and end up with 10% to 25% that are really good" category. On the other hand, I know a very few who take a few shots, and end up with 75%-90% that are really worth it.

Making a blanket statement like that about photographers is just silly. Of course, since you're talking about *wedding* photographers, maybe it's not quite as silly. : )

steve

Re:Techno Zealots...

[adrianbaugh]

While you're right that it definitely takes greatness to produce great images, there's no getting away from the fact that an idiot with a $10 disposable camera with a plastic lens will not get as good holiday snaps as if he's used an EOS-1V on "P" metering, a pro lens and a good off-camera flash. The exposure is more likely to be right, the flash will be less prone to red-eye and may well expose better due to more sophisticated flash metering, the lens will produce far better images etc.

The genius photographers are the ones who know when to say "I see what the camera is telling me to do, but I'm going to do it this way instead" and come up with a stunning image that most of us would allow the camera to tell us not to take.

Lens

[dgerman]

"NASA's Spirit Rover is providing a lesson to aspiring digital photographers: Spend your money on the lens, not the pixels."

Every good photographer will tell you the same. It still amazes me that people are willing to drop Can$.5k for a digital camera, but think you are nuts for spending the same money in a lens.

Too bad the digital cameras all come with Zooms. At the same price, a zoom lens will tend to be worse than a fixed lens. An old camera, the yashica t4 super won a great reputation for its superb fixed lens (35 mm Carl Zeiss).

I have one, and I love it. It takes the best pics I have ever seen in a P&S.

Re:Lens

[jafac]

My wife has one of these. Absolutely top-notch pictures!

It looks like a cheap peice of crap camera too - not at all likely to get stolen.

For this reason, when we went camcorder shopping, we got the Sony with the Carl Zeiss lens. I've dumped video to my Mac from three different MiniDV cameras, and my Sony is by FAR the best image quality.

Which is why, when I buy a digital still camera, I've got my sights set on the rather pricy 5-megapixel Sony model with the Zeiss lens (as far as I can tell, Sony has a monopoly on Zeiss lenses in this market. (the p&s form factor is most attractive; what good is a camera if you always leave it at home because it's too bulky? You'll NEVER catch those UFO shots!).

Re:Lens

[dgerman]

> It looks like a cheap peice of crap camera too - not at all likely to get stolen.

I bought my T4 Super for a trip to Rio. I was scared by a Brazilian friend that told me that if took my SLR, it would not make it back.

When I got the camera, I "camouflage" it by wrapping masking tape all around it (then cutting it to be able to open it). With time the masking tape has "patina" and lots of dirt/dark marks in the edges. It looks so pitiful that I think a thief will probably say "no thanks" even if I offered it to him/her :)

Re:Lens

[Jeff DeMaagd]

To go without a zoom lens, it is best to make sure that it allows attachment of lenses of different focal lengths.

Not all digital cameras have zooms either. Some may say they have zoom, it is not optical, they just interpolate the heck out of it. I haven't checked, but I think if you pay the same money like a photographer would for a film camera, you'll find digital cameras with the same kind of detaching mechanisms.

Re:Lens

[kruczkowski]

Toothpaste works good too, if your camera is black. Smear it all over and just take a wet rag to wash it off. Plus you cam will smell minty!

You ain't seen interesting yet

[switcha]

but the rest of us in the unwashed masses should find it interesting.

Indeed. In fact, so interesting that the bulk of sweeping statements and wild generalization we masses will make, will be be made without ever reading the article!

Assembled panorama

[SuperBanana]

t is also interesting to see how it produces color photos. Instead of using a 3 color sensor, it uses a B&W camera with 3 colour filters that recombine into a colour image.

That's not all- the images are clearly composited, which is why they look so stunning(yes, the huge, low-noise ccd helps, as does a great lens). The very first image released(the 8mpixel one) had a very very obvious stitching error right smack down the middle, which is pretty bad, considering that with a robotic rig and known lens characteristics, you should be able to stitch the image exactly(most errors in stitching software comes when you didn't shoot the images perfectly overlapping, or at different angles, or you took a step forward/back, etc.) You can buy software off the shelf that does a better job than NASA's job.

"How much so a man can walk on mars?"

Re:Assembled panorama

[jovlinger]

I stitched a couple of panoramas of the grand canyon with panorama tools (I used the hugin front-end, else would be a bitch and a half to set up).

Of course, I just cared about it looking good, not about accuracy, but I had few to no visible artefacts of stitching.

Both tools are somewhat poorly documented, but work very well once set up.

Re:Assembled panorama

[Anonymous Coward]

Last I knew, NASA was in the business of exploring Space, not mocking up pictures in Photoshop :)

Re:Assembled panorama

[RayBender]

you should be able to stitch the image exactly(most errors in stitching software comes when you didn't shoot the images perfectly overlapping, or at different angles, or you took a step forward/back, etc.)

The camera on the rover is on a rotating mount on a mast. Because it is a stereo camera (i.e. two cameras side-by-side), the rotation axis doesn't go down the middle of the camera. That's why you get stitching errors in large panoramas.

Blue skies?

[macdaddy]

I read somewhere after the lander, um, landed that the pictures it were sending back were flawed. The arguement was that Mars, like Earth, was supposed to have blue skies. I can't say that this is a correct assesment but it seems plausible. I do recall watching C-SPAN last week or the week before when a group was talking about Spirit. One thing they talked about was a simple little 4-color chart that could be used to sync Spirit's camera color settings to once the rover landed. The plate the color chart was on also doubled as a sun dial (low tech at it's best!). Anyhow, I thought the blue sky idea was interesting. Is the red planet really red when you're standing on it's surface?

Re:Blue skies?

[d3m057h3n35]

Apparently, the skies are indeed blue, even though I used to think the Martian atmosphere was to tenuous to filter much light. But when you think about the conception of a muddy colored, reddish sky, that doesn't make much sense (unless a dust storm's happening): once again, the atmoshpere is so thin that it can only filter some colors leaving a bluish tinge for example, but it won't disperse much light (or block out all higher energy light in favor of red).

Re:Blue skies?

[FrostedWheat]

Most of the images we see from Mars surface are of the horizon. I don't believe there ever has been an image of the full Mars sky from the surface. Perhaps the sky would be more of a blue colour looking directly up? There would be a lot less dust to give it the usual pinky/red colour.

I know at sunrise/sunset the air around the sun can appear blue.

Re:Blue skies?

[Jugalator]

I think the short answer is -- if there was no dust in the martian atmosphere coloring it to its characteristic color (i.e. a rust color from the rust in its sky), it would be, no, not bright blue like earth's, but almost black because it's so thin. But if you'd see any color from a sky cleared from dust, it would probably be blue. Anyway, its sky isn't usually blue because it's so thick of iron oxide. Sunsets on Mars can also show a blue halo around the sun.

Mars Pathfinder captured some interesting true color (or at least near-true color) images of the martian sky while it paid Mars a visit: Mars Pathfinder Images. This is one interesting true color image of the martian sky.

Re:Blue skies?

[Lexor]

It's a matter of public record that NASA manipulates images released to the public. As for the Martian sky, it's true that it is blue unless there's been a windstorm. Richard C. Hoagland has presented this very issue on an excellent web page: http://www.lunaranomalies.com/colors.htm As usual, you'd be wise to reserve judgement until you've studied the facts for yourself.

Right...

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's not a Kodak then?

Re:Right...

[HTH NE1]

So it's not a Kodak then?

Did Spirit not take pictures... further?

Pretty neat.

[ryusen]

This kind of justifies what i've been telling people about those little high mega pixel digicams all along. Think of it like Mhz for computers. It's all the manufacturer markets, but is hardly the end all.
The Article emntions the Sony 717, i've seen test shot between the Sony 5MP 717 and their 8MP 828. Their sensor size is the same, so the 828's individual sensors are smaller. After seeing them, i think i'd rather get a 717 then an 828.
Of course where we can get the quality are DSLRs. Most of these cameras have APS (23mm) or even "full frame" (35mm) sensors and can take stunning noise freephotos. You can also spend a small fortune on "pro" Lenses for these things.
- if you want samples from a dSLR and a typical "high end", check out this blatant self promotion: http://ryusenkai.org/photos.htm
If that's not enough for you, Pro photographers can also by digital backs for Medium Format Cameras. basically the really high end stuff. a Typical digital back has a 6"x4" sensor plate boasting 22MP... and you'll only have to sacrifice your next small car purchase to afford one .)

Re:Pretty neat.

[cheekyboy]

http://www.pbase.com/image/23759899

Wow... what did you do with her later... any photos of that?

Also my cheapo 2.1mp has decent results too.

Re:Pretty neat.

[Skipio]

The sensor size in digital backs is normally between 24x36mm and 48x36mm, not 6"x4". The backs with the 36x36mm 16MP Kodak sensor cost between $10.000 and $20.000.

Scanning backs can be larger but they can't, of course, be used for moving subjects.

One times Four is Five

[C10H14N2]

Considering that they're using color filters to create composites from B/W images, none of this is very surprising. If you use a 1Mp CCD with A color filters and B offsets, you will get A*B Mp of information.

>shock

And it runs Java

[bradyh]

Here's a story about some of the software involved.

Brady

Re:And it runs Java

[m00nun1t]

Maybe that's why it takes 2 days to do anything :)

(C'mon, have a sense of humour, not everything is a troll!)

I was surprised, too.

[Anonymous Coward]

But I guess they still got the right kind of guys at some places... Not the Microsoft "let's throw more hardware" kind, but the old Woz-like variant which used to wander on the Earth until some 20 years ago (ok, I'm being bitter).

BTW, we could do many things alike if we had many modular, combinable parts.

Things which come already assembled in one immutable way are not useful to create, invent or innovate.

Here's what surprises me...

[NerveGas]

Sure, the pixels in the CCD are large, giving it better light sensitivity. And sure, it's got a nice lens. Terrific.

On the other hand, consider that (a) it cost hundreds of thousands of dollars just for the fuel to get the launch craft off of the ground, ignoring all of the personnel costs, cost of the rover, etc., and that (b) this thing was only designed to travel about 600 yards.

Given the enormous expense and extremely tiny travelling range, I would think that throwing an extra thousand bucks on a higher-res CCD and a "longer" (telephoto) lens would be a no-brainer. Can't travel to the mountains? At least you'd be able to *see* them.

steve

Re:Here's what surprises me...

[vicparedes]

Maybe because spending millions of dollars on a space mission entails rigorously testing every piece of equipment which could take years before the launch? And as the article pointed out, this is not your off-the-shelf digital camera so an extra-thousand bucks will probably get you nowhere near the quality you'd otherwise expect from off-the-shelf accessories.

Re:Here's what surprises me...

[NerveGas]

Maybe because spending millions of dollars on a space mission entails rigorously testing every piece of equipment which could take years before the launch?

Yes, I'm sure that it would have taken so long to test a larger CCD and a longer lens....

an extra-thousand bucks will probably get you nowhere

So, an extra twenty thousand bucks. That's still a completely insignificant drop in the bucked in relation to the rest of the mission. What, half a million just to press the "launch" button, along with six or ten years of paying hundreds (or thousands?) of people's salaries? Twenty grand wouldn't even be noticed.

steve

Nonsense...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not very surprised that no journalist understand that, I am more surprised that /. readers missed the point: it is simply nonsense to say that the camera is 1M pixels.

Indeed, the CCD has 1 million pixels, but look at the published pictures: they are assembled from a great number of small 1 megapixels squares!! Simply have a look at the raw pictures on marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov: some of them are not fully transmitted yet, consequently parts of the pictures are black.

To make a "normal" picture, like one you would naturally do with your 5M pixels camera, the pancam needs to take shots from, say, 20 different angles. And it is even worse than that: each pictures must be taken 4 times with each filters to get colors. Do not even dream of taking photographs of moving subjects!

There is another drawback: there is two cameras, for stereo. But if you look at the tech specifications on Cornell website, you'll see that each camera has filters that can cover only one half of the color spectrum. Hence, to get color pictures, you have to combine the photographs taken by both the left and right cameras. That's why there is some weird colored patterns on big objects: to put it simply, the left camera sees the red, the right one sees the blue! But both cameras do not see exactly the same thing! /. readers, please, if you are geeks, always read the small lines. Do not expect NASA or a journalist to do that for you. It is not the interest of the former, and the latter is just stupid.

And nonetheless, there was a hint: do you really expect 1M pixels raw pictures to weight 7MB? Huuh?

Re:Nonsense...

[elendel]

do you really expect 1M pixels raw pictures to weight 7MB?

Why yes, I do.

Assuming the 7MB image is the raw output of the CCD, that gives 56 bits per pixel brightness. That is, each grayscale bit has 56 bits worth of information.

Not that I'm saying that's what is actually going on, just that you shouldn't expect a multi-million dollar camera to stick with 8-bits per pixel. In order to get as much information as possible (including being able to use various filters to their full effect) you would want as many bits per pixel as possible. Probably one reason the CCD elements on the camera are bigger than consumer models - more light, more differentiation between different states, and more information gained.

Re:Nonsense...

[Anonymous Coward]

>> do you really expect 1M pixels raw pictures to
>> weight 7MB?

> Why yes, I do.

I'm talking about what NASA calls "raw pictures", that is high quality JPEG files... 8 bits only, dear.

I agree with you on the rest of your post, but... unrelated.

Actually, from Cornell University: 16 bits per channels.

Re:Nonsense...

[Skipio]

"Assuming the 7MB image is the raw output of the CCD, that gives 56 bits per pixel brightness. That is, each grayscale bit has 56 bits worth of information.

Not that I'm saying that's what is actually going on, just that you shouldn't expect a multi-million dollar camera to stick with 8-bits per pixel. In order to get as much information as possible (including being able to use various filters to their full effect) you would want as many bits per pixel as possible. Probably one reason the CCD elements on the camera are bigger than consumer models - more light, more differentiation between different states, and more information gained."

Duh, the maximum bit depths one would ever use would be 16bits per pixel. An ADC that could output 56bits would be too expensive and absolutely useless as the signal to noise ratio on small CCDs is just too low for an ADC of better resolution than 16bits to be of any use. You'd not gain any more signal - just more noise.

Re:Nonsense...

[cheekyboy]

Pitty the software on the rover cant take the 50-200 small images, and auto stitch them based on maths of the angle posistions of the cam for each shot, then mix the R.G.B images... then compress the 8000x2000 image with jpeg2000 at a high quality setting, better to send a 4meg image, then 120meg of raw pixels, surely the detail in the sky is useless and could/should have been compressed, hardly any scientific data there. Even lossless jpeg2000.

Hopefully this kind of magic is on the drawing board for future missions.

So now we have 3 sats orbiting mars... and ZERO on the moon, why is the moon so much ignored... tho there is one on its way.

The moon needs a new map at 1pixe/foot or something, get something with a damn powerfull zoom lens to orbit the moon at 65km. Im waiting...

Also whats the best that earth based telescopes can take photos of the moon? Id lke to see them.

The VLT is intended to achieve an effective angular resolution of 0.001 arcsecond at a wavelength of 1 m. This is an angle of 0.000000005 radians, equivalent to resolving a target 2 meters across at the distance between the Earth and Moon.

So then the photos by that should reveal a damn good image. Though only 1 angel.

This is a damn good close up tho.
http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-200 2/phot -19a-02-fullres.jpg
Though only 50m/pixel .

Re:Nonsense...

[Nexx]

Please define "Small CCD's" :) The one on Sprit is much larger than the 1/1.8" or 2/3" CCD's found on a typical consumer gear, or even the 35mm full-frame found on Canon 1Ds.

Re:Nonsense...

[viking80]

Good to see one comment cut through the hype. These cameras appears to be many years old technology and not very sensitive. Having large pixels do nothing for rad-hard. Actually a drawback, as more of the image is damaged by radiation. Are there any real specs on these cameras, or just hype? Aperture, angular resolution, sensitivity, quantum efficiency, *price* and the parameters tested on any camera/lens reviewed for use here on earth.

Re:Nonsense...

[Skipio]

Small CCDs; anything used on medium format backs and smaller. The largest CCDs used in digital cameras never go beyond 16bits and few actually go beyond 14 bits.

1 megapixel camera != 1 megapixel images

[skintigh2]

Yes, the camera is 1 megapixel, but the published images are often made from multiple* shots, sometimes hundreds: for instance the panoramic images.

*No, I am not refering to 3 shots it takes to get red, green and blue data for each pixel.

Thermal Noise

[wildsurf]

I understand that thermal noise can be a cause of noisiness in CCD images. Do the low temperatures on Mars (or in cold places on Earth, for that matter) have any significant effect on digital photo quality? Could the cold temperatures on Mars be taken advantage of to maximize the quality of images taken there?

Re:Thermal Noise

[Skipio]

For long exposures it would have an effect. But for the exposure times I suspect NASA will be using, the effect will be minimal.

It may not be now,

[Anonymous Coward]

but wait a couple of hundred years from now and you'll see how things change!

is there a microphone on the Spirit Rover?

[joshiz]

Or, am I correct to assume that the atmosphere on Mars (or lack of it) does not propogate sound waves, so there would be nothing to listen to???

Re:is there a microphone on the Spirit Rover?

[Alex_Ionescu]

Mars does have a small atmosphere...so sound waves could probably be transmitted. But they wouldn't sound anything like real sound, the pitch would be way off (kind of like hearing a sound underwater, but backwards)

Re:is there a microphone on the Spirit Rover?

[joshiz]

so then i would bet there is a microphone on the Rover. i think the audio feed would be interesting...

Re:is there a microphone on the Spirit Rover?

[sh0rtie]

not this mission but in 2007 their will be 4 of them, its a joint project between the Planetary Society and SSL berkley[project sites]


In 2007 the French NetLander mission is scheduled to deploy a network of 4 identical landers to study the atmosphere and interior structure of Mars. Onboard each NetLander craft will be upgraded versions of the Mars Microphone sensors placed on the panoramic camera head, enabling stereo recordings of the Martian sounds from a height of about 1 meter above the surface

Re:is there a microphone on the Spirit Rover?

[joshiz]

thanks for the info...

Re:is there a microphone on the Spirit Rover?

[dekashizl]

But they wouldn't sound anything like real sound, the pitch would be way off (kind of like hearing a sound underwater, but backwards)

Then I hope the Martians don't start playing their subliminal messages to our little rover:
"... woN tcurtseD fleS ... sretsaM dnuobhtraE ruoY nodnabA"

But seriously, here is NASA's page listing the Rover Instruments. No microphone. And for lots more info, check the link below.

-
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.

Spirit camera in effect 3+ megapixel

[mc6809e]

The article implies that the camera is monochrome and that filters are used to capture each color.

So, adding the images together, 1 megapixel green + 1 mp red + 1 mp blue = 3 megapixels.

Re:Spirit camera in effect 3+ megapixel

[JoeBuck]

No, that's not the way digital cameras are sold. My 2 megapixel camera makes images with about 2 million pixels, each of which include a red, blue, and green component.

Re:Spirit camera in effect 3+ megapixel

[ramk13]

You can't add megapixels like that...

It's really just a 1 MP image with more information per pixel. The top left pixel in each image is really imaging the same thing, just a different aspect (wavelength) of it.

Re:Spirit camera in effect 3+ megapixel

[squid_wrangler]

The original poster is correct. What you get with consumer digital cameras is a collection of sensors built into the CCD (or CMOS) imaging array, each of which has a built-in filter for a particular color. The total number of pixels reported (i.e. "X megapixels") is the sum of all red, green and blue sensitive sensors. You do not get "X megasensors", each of which is independently sensitive to red, green and blue. The ratios (and distribution) of the red, green and blue sensors are based on the sensitivities of the human eye to different spectral ranges. It is indeed true that the Spirit camera is comparable to a 3 megapixel consumer camera, not 1 megapixel.

Re:Spirit camera in effect 3+ megapixel

[Anonymous Coward]

"So, adding the images together, 1 megapixel green + 1 mp red + 1 mp blue = 3 megapixels."

Actually it is the other way around. Your 3MP P&S camera has 3 million grayscale pixels. The camera has a red, green and blue filter over the pixels. This makes your 3MP camera produce 1MP of detail (with som reservation for gains in interpolation done in software inside the cam)...

Re:Spirit camera in effect 3+ megapixel

[Anonymous Coward]

That's fine for landscapes etc, but it will really suck when a Martian walks across the scene while Spirit is changing filters. "On the left you see the Red Martian, in the middle the Blue One, and far right, the famous Green Martian".

Re:Spirit camera in effect 3+ megapixel

[javatips]

The difference is that resolution of consumer camera is the output resolution... The actual number of pixel in the CCD is never specified.

The Spirit cam has 1 megapixel CCD. The fact that is take 3 shots for a full color picture effectuvely increase it's output resolution to 3 megapixels.

correct color?

[Anonymous Coward]

they are great but are they correct? i know it sounds like a crackpot conspiracy type observation but i think this question is sound. I mean, everyone knows it's a dead red dust laden planet. so why do we keep seeing blue skies in various ap photos of nasa press conferences?

press conference

here is the link to the same photo from the press conference. it's a little bit more red, don't ya think?

official for public consumption

here is a page of comparisons of various jpl/nasa official public photos with links to originals off of nasa.gov...

comparisons all around

and as far as canadian press is concerned, it seems they are gonna go with the blue "arizona-like" version...

canada knows

i don't believe in little green men but i know when my images are too red and have the need for the curves tool in photoshop.

Re:correct color?

[eminentbrain]

Interesting. Yeah, Mars is red, dead and dusty. It also has dust storms, which obviously suggests a dense enough atmosphere to pick up particulate matter. So, I don't know the answer to your question, but is it reasonable to surmise than on days where the dust isn't blowing that perhaps Rayleigh Scattering is to blame for the color and perhaps in some instances Mars sky is blue? After all, our blue skies are due to the gases in our atmosphere, not due to water vapor.

Optimized for still pictures?

[El]

Yeah, that's great for taking pictures of things that aren't moving, but if some fast-moving martian zips past Spirit, all we're going to see is a low-res blur!

This is why my 2.7mp digital SLR is still great.

[sejanus]

A lot of people see the prints from my digital SLR, a gracefully aging Nikon D1h and are astonished to learn it's from digital. Most then refuse to believe it's only a 2.7mp camera.

Near all my pictures at www.gavincato.com in the photography section are with the Nikon D1h.

The Nikon D1h has only a 2.7mp sensor, but the output is fantastic. The pixels are large, and the noise is pretty low. It's pretty much noiseless until you hit 800 ISO, and even at 1600 ISO it's significantly better than 1600 speed film.

NASA is very correct in saying the lens & sensor are important, for example most of my lenses are ludicrously expensive (often more than the camera body) and the majority of them are fixed length lenses and thus have incredible optics.

I've previously owned a Nikon D100 which had 6mp, but I found to my surprise that I preferred the output & prints from the D1h. I originally bought the D1h to complement the D100 (the D1h is a crazy fast camera designed for sports), not replace it, but after a while I ended up selling the D100.

The guys in the Canon camp have said the same thing, they much prefer the output of the 4mp Canon 1D vs the 6mp Canon 10D.

Keep in mind...

[MrScience]

Most digi-cams say that they are 3MP, but keep in mind that for any given pixel requires four elements (RGGB) to create. I believe the Spirit camera is only sensitive to light, and has interchangable filters (so it must make three passes to get full color) -- effectively tripling the "element count" of the sensor.

stilesja

[Anonymous Coward]

"They are the world's highest performing chips in terms of light sensitivity and chip quality," Myles said in a telephone interview earlier this week.

World's? neigh, Solar System's.

Re: convinience of zooms

[ryusen]

it all boils down to that really. zooms are more convinient, especially if you are unsure of how your composition will be.
granted the primes are really sweet, but i would only use one under controlled conditions. The only prime i own is a 50mm for portraits (which works out to about 80+mm after the sensor conversion factor.) For everything else, zooms are just more practical.
Not to mention the big primes are REALLY expensive. My current price limit is about $1000 for a lens. If i can get a Lens that will do 95% of the job for 60% of the money, i'll do it.

Tradeoffs for zoom...

[Goonie]

Yes, I'm sure your old Yashica can take some great pictures, but the versatility you get with a zoom lens is hard to beat in many applications. For instance, this shot of the White House, as I said on the caption, is pretty much impossible without a telephoto lens. I found that kind of situation comes up very regularly on the trip I took that photo on.

Re:Tradeoffs for zoom...

[dgerman]

Not to be picky but you could have taken that photo with a large fixed lens (no necessarily a zoom).

But I fully agree with you: zooms exists because they are more convenient. I just wish some cheap digital cameras would recognize that some of us want quality photos, even at lower resolutions.

Besides, when one uses a fixed lens, one looks at the world in a different way, trying to see what "fits" in the frame, rather than trying to fit your frame to the scene: they are just different types of photography (I use zooms and fixed lenses on a regular basis).

Re:Tradeoffs for zoom...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mind you, this photograph was definitely taken with a fixed lens. People (e.g. YOU) need to realize that long lenses are seldom zooms. E.g. Canon, Nikon, Minolta etc. do NOT offer zooms (that I know of) that are longer than 400mm. Sigma does have a zoom that goes to 800mm but few photographers have it and it is much more unwieldy than prime lenses in this range.

Re:Tradeoffs for zoom...

[Anonymous Coward]

The relatively ancient Sony FD-91 digital camera has the equivalent of 37-518mm optical zoom, with an optical image stabilizer to boot: you can take freehand pictures of the snot in the beak of a sparrow up a tree if you want to.

But alas, the optics and imagine software are both pretty sucky, so you end up with chromatic aberration and jpeg artifacts of the snot.

Re: Expensive compare to what?

[Anonymous Coward]

To my entire life salaries total sum.

Is this a good enough comparison to you?

400 million is a lot of money, even more if it's US dollars. This is not against space exploration, it's against stupidity. Couldn't they just send a thousand low-quality rovers, at 400K USD each and be happy with 0.3% success rate?

Re:This is why my 2.7mp digital SLR is still great

[ryusen]

question. is your 1d full frame? that would easily explain why it's got better iamges than the 100d.
i'm one of those int he canon camp and i do have to concur with you on those findings. my canon has an APS sized sensor and can take very noise free iamges upto 400 ISO, at 800, it's still useable.. and i've done 1600 ISO shots, but i only use it if i have no other choice.

one thing people don't understand is the extra MPs only matter if you want to blow up your images. most people rarely print bigger than 4x6" and at the largest 8x10" 3MP resolution is more than good enough for an 8x10" print. after that, you want the best out of those MPs... NOT more MPs.

DON'T LOOK!

[StefanJ]

If you follow that link and see the forbidden image of a Zero-Point Energy module left behind when the Grays dumped Elvis' worn-out second body on Mars back in 1972, you're just asking to disappear one of these days.

Interpolation

[ryusen]

the sensor advetized as a "2mp" sensor typically has a bayer pattern. since the sensor can only record B&W information, they put a patter of RBG filters in front of each sensor lement like so:
RGRGRGRG
GBGBGBGB

so your 2mp sensor is capturing 500k pixels of red tones, 500k of blue tones, and 1M of green tones.then software will interpolate this pattern into a 2mp image with all three colour elements.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

you don't need gazillion megapixels ...

[porky_pig_jr]

to produce decent digital pictures. In fact, having very large number of pixels introduced lots of noise. The latest Sony camera - 8M pixels - is a good example. The camera simply isn't good. High level of noise, and color abberations. They've crammed too many pixels in CCD with the area too small.

OTOH, the high quality lenses and high quality post-processing of captured image are important factors in getting decent digital pictures. Yet 'unwashed masses' only understand one thing - the magic pixel number.

Re:you don't need gazillion megapixels ...

[kinnell]

Yet 'unwashed masses' only understand one thing - the magic pixel number

It's the "MHz myth" all over again. The moral is: big numbers shift units.

cinema-quality ccd

[Via_Patrino]

Dalsa, (...) makes cinema-quality video components

Does anyone know where i can buy used ccd video cameras, from Dalsa clients (like holywood studios) that don't want to use them anymore?

I mean from the real clients, not from some intermediary that will sell them on ebay ...

Re:FP!

[Anonymous Coward]

it's one big long line of shit.

nothing to see here folks, move along please...

Re: Expensive compare to what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you have to factor in higher lauch costs (a thousand launches rather than one or two), plus higher operating costs (organization of a thousand launches, landings, unfurlings, communications, etc.)

Color Russian "Photos" from before WW I

[zipwow]

His name was Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, and they're awesome. You have to remind yourself of the time period when you see them, or you'll instinctively think they're more modern:

http://www.ummagurau.com/art/russia/

Re:Color Russian "Photos" from before WW I

[Anonymous Coward]

Fantastic, absolutely fantastic. One of the most enlightening posts in slashdot for a while.

Re:Color Russian "Photos" from before WW I

[Orion442]

Yeah, they would be cool if they weren't fakes. http://www.ummagurau.com/art/russia/watermanagemen t2.jpg clearly shows a US flag flying above one of the buildings, so I have to question where, who and how all of the pictures actually were taken.

Re:Color Russian "Photos" from before WW I

[mantera]

that's not a US flag that's an imperial russia flag

Re:Color Russian "Photos" from before WW I

[Orion442]

Nyetski, the Imperial Russia Flag had a coat of arms on a yellow field:
http://www.flagemporium.com/graphics/impruss.gif
http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?xpufu=x &query=russia+flag&newu=1&krd=1

Re:Color Russian "Photos" from before WW I

[uberdave]

Since when was the US flag blue on top and red on the bottom with a white crest in the middle? It might be this flag.

What is the REAL color of the sky on Mars?

[cshotton]

Ever since the first Viking lander beamed back an image of a blue sky on Mars which was "adjusted" to show a pink sky in subsequent photos, I've wondered what the real sky color is. I am not a conspiracy theorist by any stretch, but the large, full color image of the Spirit Landing site at http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spiri t/20040112a/mspan_2X_final-A10R1.jpg has pretty obviously been photoshopped to remove the sky and replace it with a solid peach color. Look at the horizon line in this photo and notice the jagged pixels along the hilltops. This doesn't appear in any of the monochrome images that are composited to produce the color images. So what other explanation is there other than the sky was edited out and replaced with peach?

What color was it before the picture was edited and if it wasn't "peach", why does NASA think we need to see a pink Martian sky? What happened to the blue sky that Viking showed us? Just wondering if anyone else has noticed this.

Re:What is the REAL color of the sky on Mars?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the pictures take so long to take, multiple shots for colour, multiple shots to make up the image, etc, etc, then it follows that the visible stars appear move and show 'ufo' like trails in the sky.

Joe six-pack is gonna want to know who's flying around up there.

Re:What is the REAL color of the sky on Mars?

[Chokai]

A nice realistic explanation is that the shots were probably taken over a period of hours (if not days) and the clouds don't match. So someone went in and fixed it up to make it look all pretty. No doubt the same was done for the ground (shadows, lighting level etc).

What would be much more interesting and informative is to see the "raw" pictures that originally made up the composite NASA has put together.

Re:What is the REAL color of the sky on Mars?

[patbob]

the first Viking lander beamed back an image of a blue sky on Mars

Wasn't this the image that also showed a piece of one of the cables of the lander.. which was supposed to be orange in the image and wasn't, causing them to color correct the image until it was orange, thus making the sky pink? Or maybe that was some other Mars lander image.

Either way, most landers with cameras now have a color calibration target somewhere in view to help fix those sorts of problems. Heck, even the Soviet Venus lander images referneced in this /. article have a color target, and for them the affects of temperature and pressure had to be adjusted for too.

Re:What is the REAL color of the sky on Mars?

[cshotton]

Wasn't this the image that also showed a piece of one of the cables of the lander.. which was supposed to be orange in the image and wasn't, causing them to color correct the image until it was orange, thus making the sky pink? Or maybe that was some other Mars lander image.

I vaguely recall something like that. But it always seemed odd because it seemed like the camera would have been calibrated before launch. Obvously floating in a vacuum for many months could affect that, but still, going from blue to pink is a pretty extreme switch.

The suspended dust argument also seems a bit bothersome. If there is enough dust suspended in the atmosphere to cause a pink tint to the sky, doesn't it seem like the quality of images taken from orbit through this dust would be significantly degraded? Think about how much dust in the atmosphere it takes here to change the sky color. E.g., Iraqi dust storms last April

Re:What is the REAL color of the sky on Mars?

[Rothron the Wise]

I suspect in this picture, there was large pieces of the sky missing, that they'd decided not to capture, to save time, so the sky was just filled in later.

Re:What is the REAL color of the sky on Mars?

[tommy_teardrop]

Of course it is colourised - the image was taken with a filter that doesn't properly read the red wavelength part of the spectrum. They have been using an infrared filter to map out the landscape because it produces much better details, and at this stage of the mission, details are far more important than natural colours. If you want real colour, you need the L4, the L5, and the L6 filters, for R,G,B respectively. Try these:

red
green
blue

Use an image program that lets you alter the RGB colour channels, and just stick them in.

If you want a comparison, use one of the sets of images from the Color Wheel, for example, these:

red
green
blue

The colours are close to those taken on Earth, you can try fiddling them a bit to get them closer if you want, but the timing and light conditions on Mars may be different for the landscape and the Color Wheel. If you do the same with the standardly used images, the L2, L5 and L6 filters, the Color Wheel is clearly wrong.

Re:What is the REAL color of the sky on Mars?

[cshotton]

I suspect in this picture, there was large pieces of the sky missing, that they'd decided not to capture, to save time, so the sky was just filled in later.

Yep, this was all I could come up with, too.

Re:What is the REAL color of the sky on Mars?

[patbob]

the camera would have been calibrated before launch

Color reference cards are used even by photographers on earth to allow them to correct colors. It all has to do with how human eyes and brains perceive color -- seems they filter out color casts. For example, when was the last time you remmeber a Coke can looking a different color of red? It does under different lighting sources, but most people don't notice it until it is pointed out to them. Cameras, howebver, don't compensate for color casts like that, so the images we get back from them look wrong until we adjust the image.

If there is enough dust suspended in the atmosphere to cause a pink tint to the sky, doesn't it seem like the quality of images taken from orbit through this dust would be significantly degraded?

It is. However, how small of an object is it resolving? Remember, the orbiter that the ESA sent recently couldn't even see the failed lander, despite making a low pass over it, which would have allowed it to pick up the smallest details it was going to be able to (when you can't zoom with your lens, zoom with your feet :-).

Also, how much dust would it take to obscure something like a football field-sized rock? Yeah, a lot. It would look significantly darker at the surface under that storm due to all the sunlight being reflected away from the ground. I think Mars does get these sorts of surface-obscuring storms, but nobody likes to try to get their landers in the path of any (wreaks havoc on them and they only take boring pictures during such storms, and, of course, landing in one might be unwise).

Re:This is why my 2.7mp digital SLR is still great

[sejanus]

No it's not full frame, Nikon haven't made any full frame digital slr's yet - it's a 1.5x crop factor CCD.

I know it was a rhetorical question

[cheezus]

Lets say joe consumer drives a "light truck" that gets 15mpg. He drives 50 miles roundtrip to work each day, about 300 a week with random errands. He does this 50 weeks of the year (vaction time makes math easier), thus going about 15,000 miles a year. That's 1,000 gallons of gas a year. Thus the price of gas would have to drop $1.40 a gallon to get the $1400 worth of oil out of it.

so yeah, guess you're right :)

It's not the size of your pixels...

[yintercept]

It's not the size of your pixels but what you do with them.

I am not surprised at all, and I am glad to see that NASA didn't fall for the marketing hype that the number of megapixels is the determining factor in the quality of a photographic image. Personally, I would prefer a 1 megapixel camera with an SLR (single reflex lens) to 5 megapixel camera.

I believe the secret to art is the process used in filtering down to the information that you really need in a picture.

The two areas that you miss with smaller megapixel cameras are textures and fractal patterns such as the shapes of leaves, forests and grassy fields. However, when you really need to study a pattern, you can zoom in (assuming you have a decent lens) and get the information you need.

I think 1 megapixel is the right image size for the job at hand. Of course, all the pictures from Mars with trees and grassy fields will be a bit fuzzy. Those of rocks, landscapes and strange green alien creatures will turn out fine.

Why big pixels are good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Large pixels are more sensitive to light, meaning they are better able to cope with a wider range of values. Notice the details both in the shadows and in the sunlight: here. Try doing that with a consumer-level camera (on planet Earth, of course) and you will find that the shadows will be pure black or the sunlit regions pure white.

Re: convinience of zooms

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree, primes are much more handy than zooms (they are smaller, lighter and 2-4 times faster) and they make it easier to take better pictures which, in the end, is all that matters.

An inexperienced photographer with a zoom lens will spend way too much time deciding which focal length to use for each photograph. This is in addition to deciding where to stand, what to focus on, the shutter speed and f-stop and so on.
A photographer with a prime will just zoom with his feets - mentally much easier task than zooming. This is at least my experience. Zooms do of course have their purpose, for weddings for example and press photography but for general photography I'd rather have a 35mm or 50mm prime.

Big primes (300mm+) are expensive yes, but quality zooms are even more expensive. You seem to be comparing apples and oranges; quality long primes which do indeed cost more than $1000 and inexpensive consumer zooms (100-300mm f/5.6?) which are slow and of much inferior quality. A good zoom lens, such as the Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS which costs around $1400 which is more than primes in this range which will be lighter, sharper, faster etc. than the zoom.

However, few people do need such long lenses. The majority of people do take pictures of people and places they visit and for this kind of photography one seldom needs a lens longer than 100mm. I get by with a 24mm, 50mm and 85mm primes. I paid less than $700 for these three lenses but a nice zoom (24-70mm f/2.8) would have cost more than $1000. If one is actually photographing sport or wild animals (which I somehow doubt you are doing) one would of course need longer lenses but these would most likely be primes as well as long zooms are inferior in quality.

Still, I'd like to have one of those 70-200mm zooms. These are actually quite useable.

Multiple exposure explained

[dargaud]

For those not familiar with it, the multiple exposure they talk about in the article has been long used in the darkroom and can be done easily with modern scanners with good software. It brings out extreme details in parts of images that are normally burnt out.

Take a single slide that you scan. With a program like VueScan, you can set the exposure of the scanner, so you can do a dark scan (thus exposing properly the light part of the image), a normal scan and a light scan (exposing the dark part of the image).

Import all 3 into a graphic program, superimpose them and cancel the parts that you don't like (which is the creative part and not as easy as it seems).

Note that you can also do that taking 3 pictures with various exposure with the camera on a tripod, and it's the way the Mars rover does it.

Re:Multiple exposure explained

[donutello]

The multiple scans they did on the Spirit are slightly different. The multiple scans are not intended for exposure correction but rather because the CCD on the Spirit is not capable of taking multi-color images. The multiple exposures capture different parts of the spectrum.

Re:This is why my 2.7mp digital SLR is still great

[ryusen]

not full frame, i'm really impressed then... but of course you probably have paid a few $k more for the camera and then another few $k more on lenses than me.
(only shooting with an EOS300D)

Definitely with a zoom...

[Goonie]

How do I know? Simple. I took it with my digicam, a Pentax Optio 550.

I fully realize that high-quality fixed-length telephotos can take nicer shots than a zoom. All I need is somebody to volunteer to lug the gear around three countries on two continents - not to mention donate me the thousands of dollars those kind of lenses cost.

Quick Summary

[KingOfBLASH]

Resolution in cameras (both digital and film) is really determined by optics.

I'd like to add that, if you've ever seen a blown up 35mm picture to an 8x10 or larger, if you look closely you can see the grains of film. However, if you look at a picture that is blown up from a 3"x5" sheet of film, it will look amazing. The article says that although the CCD is 1M Pixel its CCD area is much larger then a standard digital camera. That's something most people seem to have overlooked.

So, one of the reasons that the pictures are so good is that the images don't have to be blown up as much because the surface area is larger. This is effectivly upping the Megapixels of the camera, although they also say that the more megapixels the less sensitive the individual pixels are to light. So this gives spirit a definite advantage: the CCD is more sensitive then, say, the 5+ Mega pixel camera it may be equivalent to when you take into account the area of the CCD, but it is more sensitive.

Re:Quick Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'd like to add that, if you've ever seen a blown up 35mm picture to an 8x10 or larger, if you look closely you can see the grains of film."

Depends on the film, Kodak Technipan will still look amazing at 8x10. Consumer 400 ASA films will be quite bad though.

"if you look at a picture that is blown up from a 3"x5" sheet of film"

I've never heard of 3x5 sheet film; most large format photographers use 4x5 film.

Re:Quick Summary

[crayz]

So, one of the reasons that the pictures are so good is that the images don't have to be blown up as much because the surface area is larger

How does this honestly work. What if I have a sensor 1 foot x 1 foot, with 4 pixels. Is it going to produce a better image than a 4 megapixel Sony consumer cam?

Re:Quick Summary

[KingOfBLASH]

"I'd like to add that, if you've ever seen a blown up 35mm picture to an 8x10 or larger, if you look closely you can see the grains of film."

Depends on the film, Kodak Technipan will still look amazing at 8x10. Consumer 400 ASA films will be quite bad though.

Well yes, there are a number of variables involved. The more money you're willing to pay for film the better the quality. And there are a bunch of variables that change the size of the grain in the film thus increasing quality. Like film speed.

"if you look at a picture that is blown up from a 3"x5" sheet of film"

I've never heard of 3x5 sheet film; most large format photographers use 4x5 film.

Sorry that was probably a typo. Years ago I used to fool around with photography and I don't quite remember all the details. :-D

Re:Quick Summary

[KingOfBLASH]

So, one of the reasons that the pictures are so good is that the images don't have to be blown up as much because the surface area is larger

How does this honestly work. What if I have a sensor 1 foot x 1 foot, with 4 pixels. Is it going to produce a better image than a 4 megapixel Sony consumer cam?

That is an extreme case so probably not. But the film (or the CCD) has a certain resolution over a certain size. So when you blow it up and increase the area of the print increases you decrease the resolution of the print.

There are a certain number of pixels per print, ok? If you measure them in dots per inch, when you double the area you half the dpi. The Spirit's sensor is bigger then a normal camera so you could convert it to some other resolution.

I can tell you that if you had a 1 foot x 1 foot camera that was 1 Mega pixel, that the pictures woudl be amazing. Of course, perhaps I am wrong that 1 Megapixel == x dpi no matter what the size of the "film". But the thing I don't understand is why the article said that the greater area of the CCD chip made a difference if you can't convert 1 Megapixel into x dpi.

Re: Expensive compare to what?

[cujo_1111]

400 million is a lot of money, even more if it's US dollars

400 million US dollars is not what it once was... so with the US dollar going down the drain, the project is costing less in real terms.

If they weren't spending 400 million dollars on sending little robots to Mars to find out more about the place, they would be making more planes, ships and guns to kill people with. I prefer the Mars option myself.

i see your point

[ryusen]

maybe i should have said, for my purposes and for people in my situation.

yes you can foot-zoom, but you don't always have that kind of opportunity, or sometimes you want to make a quick wider shot w/o switching lenses or position.

right now, i'm on a kick of shooting surf meets. it's nice in these cases to have a zoom that can give me reach AND let me take an occasional snapshot of the audience with a wider angle. from my research i'd say that sigma 50-500 ex hsm is probably the best for me within my budget and needs.

well there is also a quality factor involed with the primes you have. which models exactly are they and are any of them "L" lenses? (i'm assuming you're a cnon guy). the 24-70 is an L lens right? for that range, i would rather buy the 28-105 USM or the 28-135 USM IS. cheaper than the three primes and easier to carry around. if you're just walking around taking snaps, then changing lenses is a pain.
where those primes are great is when you have a well composed and controled setting.

as for those 70-200 zoom.. i just ordered one definaly a nice range to have. i'm going to try and use that as the main lens for a friend's wedding in a few months.

as i said.. that's what my limited experience has shown me... perhaps i will change my mind after i can afford more prime and start seeign the quality difference. atleast for now, my budget is with zooms.

Re:i see your point

[Anonymous Coward]

The standard wedding lens is a 28[24]-70mm f/2.8 pro lens (just rent it). I'd strongly advise against using a 70-200mm as your main wedding lens. And if you need to use flash, remember to bounce it.

I don't like the Sigma 170-500mm lens as it has an aperture of f/6.3 at 500mm which means you can't use autofocus and it is difficult to manual focus as well because the viewfinder will be too dark. I'd get a nice prime 300mm f/4 or 400m f/5.6 lens instead if I were you. You could get a used lens for under $500 and an used 300mm f/4L Canon lens (a terrific lens by any count) will cost around $600. I can gurantee you will be much more pleased with that choice, especially considering you will also have a 70-200mm lens.

If Cartier Bresson didn't ever need to change lenses then I'm sure as hell I won't need to ;)

Re:i see your point

[Anonymous Coward]

And ... I don't find the biggest advantage of primes to be that they are sharper. No, what I like about them is that they are smaller, lighter and faster. It's not like people are using the full potential of their lenses in most circumstances. If you are, for example, hand holding a 50mm lens at 1/60 shutter your hand shaking will have much larger effect on the image quality than whether you are using a prime or zoom lens. So, if you are going to invest in one more photography related object you should buy a tripod (Bogen/Manfrotto makes nice and cheap tripods). Then you should stop buying more stuff until you actually KNOW what you actually need as opposed to what you WANT.

Re:i see your point

[ryusen]

for the wedding, it'll be outdoors during the day. no flash will probably be used for most of my shots. i wont be the actual photographer, so i was thinking about staying on the periphary and taking various shots of the people as well as the wedding party. on the off chance, that they want me to take some portraits, i can always slap my 50mm prime on and get my flash for fill.

i'm not sure about the sigma 170-500, but i've been told the 50-500 can still autofocus despite the f6.3. i'm not sure how it does so... plus it has HSM and a manual focus ring, so i coudl just set it to infinity for most of the long shots.
i also considered a 300 f/4 but i'd need to put a 1.4x TC on it. i don't mind that, but it eliminates the opportunity shots of things that might pass by closer in front.
thank you for your advise though, i will keep your recomendation in mind, but i wont be buying either of those lenses for a few months minimum (need to recover my bank account after the 70-200...)

Re:i see your point

[Anonymous Coward]

our discussion is getting very off-topic. feel free to email me if you want to continue this dev_null@ryusenkai.org .)

That article makes no sense at all

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

IMAX quality images out of a 1 megapixel camera? I think not. NASA have high resolution images because they're tiling many low quality images together. 1 megapixel is definitely less than the resolution a prosumer grade lens can project. So sacrificing pixels this much for a lens makes no sense.

I'm sure there is some reasoning behing NASA's decision but that article doesn't say what it is!

But the funny thing is that NASA don't even have decent software for tiling those images so they have seams everywhere (and I don't just mean from the color variance).

Re:sheesh

[Anonymous Coward]

if i said nothing that you might be hoping for happened, would you believe me?

Well ya

[Sycraft-fu]

That would be the correct usage of the mega prefix. If you check the definition of SI prefixes (which mega is one of) you will find they are all defined in terms of base 10, and no other base. Kilo is defined as 10^3, mega as 10^6 and so on. Thus a mega-anything is 1,000,000 of that thing by definition.

However, computer people hijacked the prefixes and started using them incorrectly. Since computers are base 2, base 10 numbers don't divide down nicely. 1,000,000 isn't remotely near a nice round number in base 2. So they took the SI prefixes and used them to indicate base 2 numbers. Kilo was used to mean 2^10, mega 2^20 and so on.

Well this is an incorrect usage, and one seen ONLY in computers. Everything else, it is base 10. If I say I have a kilogram of something I mean 1000 grams. Likewise with calories, metres, whatever.

Re:Well ya

[Jerf]

'When _I_ use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less.'

Do not argue with the folks who took "Semantics" and "Linguistics" from abstract, useless philosophy and made a profession of turning it into running code on real machines.

Annoy us futher and we'll convince you that what you call a "kilobyte" is actually named Terrence the Twenty Third, who is called The Man of 10907481356194159294629842447337828624482641619962 32692431832786189721331849119295216264234525201987 22395729179615702527310987082017718406361097976507 75547990789062988421929895386098252280482051596968 51613591638196771886542609324560121290553901886301 01790025253579991720001007960002653583680090529780 58809523505016301954756539110053123645600148474260 35293551245843928918752768696279344088055617515694 34994540667782514081490061610592025643850457801332 64935658360472424073824428122451315177575191648992 26365743722432277368075027627883045206501792761700 94569916849725787968385173704999690096112051565505 01155612714914925153421057489666295470327863215057 30828430221664970324396138635251626409516168005427 62343599630892169144618118740639531066540488573943 48328774281674074953709935118687563599703901170218 23616749458620969857006263612082706715408157066575 13728102702231092756491027675916052087830463241104 93645687549209673229824591847634273837902724484380 18526977764941072715611580434690827459339991961414 24274141059911742606055648376375631452761136265862 83833686211579936380208785376755453367899156942344 33955666315070087213535470255670312004130725495834 50835743965382893607708097855057891296790735278005 49356215610907958451729541159729274798775277385600 08204118558930004777748727761853813510493840581861 59865221160596030835640594182118971403786872621948 14987276036536162988561748224130334854387853240247 51419417183012281078209729303537372804574372095228 70362277636394529086980625842235514850757103961938 74496298668081887696628157781530793931790931436483 40761738581819563002994422790754955061288818308430 07964869323217915876591803556521615711540299212027 61556078731079374774668415283629877086994501520312 31862594203085693838944657061346236704234026821102 95895495119708707654618662279629453645162075650935 10189060237738215395327762086769785897319663303088 93304665169436185078350641568336944530051437491311 29883436726523859540490427345592872394952522718461 74043678547546104743770197680255766058810380772707 07717942221977090385438585844095492116099852538903 97465570394397308609093059696336076752996493841459 81857059637545614973558278136238332889063090042880 17321424808663962671333528009232758350873059614118 72378142210146019861574738685509689608918918044133 95585248228675411132126387936755676503403629700319 30023397828465318547238244232028015189689660418822 97600081543761065225427016359565087543385114712321 42272666054035817814690908065764689505876619971865 05665475715792896 Distinct States, which means About One Page, but all it is is a slithy jabberwock, and by then you'll be so confused you'd believe anything just to shut us

Butterscotch maybe?

[Cyno01]

I remember seeing this on one of the fisrt postings about spirit.

Consumer Triple CCD Devices?

[shogun]

Ok I know there are digital video cameras such as the Panasonic PV-DV953 that use triple CCDs with colour filters. What I'd like to know are there any decent consumer still digital cameras that use a triple CCD for optimal image quality?

Re:Consumer Triple CCD Devices?

[Anonymous Coward]

Foveon's technology on Sigma's SD9 and SD10 is 10 megapixels but divides it by 3 for RGB. So each color gets 3 megapixels (rounded number, of course.) Their CCD captures all three colors at once on different layers of the CCD, then superimpose them to create a final image. I don't see how this is necessarily better on the final image than other cameras....
Other cameras sacrifice, or commit each pixel to a specific color - red, green, or blue.

This is not exactly what you want, but it's the closest we have so far.

camera on the landing pad

[bbdd]

one thing i miss that we had with pathfinder is a camera on the landing pad to take pictures of the rover while it moves around.

this cam might also be convienient for inspecting the rover for wear or damage.

granted, spirit will probably move out of range of the landing pad shortly, but it would be nice to have an external cam to get a shot of the rover first. for the rover team at jpl, it would be like a photo of their kid. i can see them carrying it around in their wallets, showing it off to friends and family. :-)

Holy Spirit ...

[GodWasAnAlien]

I VVonder YYhy I saw that.

move along--nothing new here

[ajagci]

Using color filters for high quality digital color photography is an old technology (and even older for analog). Its obvious limitation is that the subject has to be still.

Bigger pixels at lower resolution are not necessarily a good tradeoff: you can do almost as well in terms of noise and sensitivity by using more smaller sensors and performing the averaging in software.

Compositing lots of low resolution images into a single high resolution image is also completely standard: you can get both free and commercial software to do it.

Altogether, I suspect that if you take something like the new Sony 8Mpixel camera and take raw pictures with it, and reduce it to 1024x768 using good software, you are going to be pretty close to the measured quality and sensitivity of Spirit's sensor (in practice, you'll see little or no difference under normal circumstances, however). Then, you can use compositing software to composit multiple images for panoramas.

The Spirit tradeoffs make sense for a Mars rover, also taking into account power and weight requirements, but they do not result in a level of picture quality that you couldn't achieve with the digital cameras you can buy at the local store.

More technical info on instruments HERE.

[dekashizl]

High quality images are good for PR, but what I really want to know is how it extracts information from the environment, how this information is being used, and whether or not we found anything we didn't expect to find.

Another poster responded with some good details about the CCD cameras, but I think your question might be a bit more general... The MER Spirit has a very sophisticated set of scientific instruments on it, among which is the Panoramic Camera ("Pancam") which has returned many of the pretty high res photos we've seen, some in 3D.

It also has a Mini-TES (Thermal Emission Spectrometer), Microscopic Imager, Spectrometer, and lots more tools and instrumentation aboard.

A good starting point to find out more about the rover and instrument technology is:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.

Re:This is why my 2.7mp digital SLR is still great

[adrianbaugh]

From the Canon camp, I'm not surprised. The 1 range is pro stuff, so it gets the highest quality parts: in this case, that 4Mp sensor will be the best they can find (and the software might be better, though that's just my speculation). The two-digit cameras are semi-pro stuff and although they tend to perform like workhorses they don't have the robustness, build quality or attention to detail of the 1 range.
I've never owned any of the digital bodies (yet!) but I've had a 10 and a 1N. The 10 was very good for its time and the class of camera (very fast motor drive, 5fps without a booster) but the 1N is in a different league. The only time it's let me down is when the battery died.
I suspect similar differences will apply on their digital models - I'd be more interested to know how the 4Mp 1D compares with the 12Mp 1Ds (I think the 1Ds uses two of the 10D's 6Mp CCDs stuck side by side).

A 1D body is very much on my winning-the-lottery list, though...

More Info on Pancam and other instruments here.

[dekashizl]

For lots more info on the Pancam, other instruments on the rovers, and tons more history, news, status updates, video, 3d photos, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.

I AM THE MODERATOR

[Anonymous Coward]

I am the moderator and I moderated your stupid posts down because you are stupid and I have mod points and fuck you hahahahahahahah I have mod points and you don't you fucking loser I AM TEH BEST FUCKING ModErATOR TEH SpOKE HAs SEEN!! You suck and I hate you so I mod you offtopic and burn your karma like a bag of dogshit, hahahahahahahhahaa I kicked yer asssssszzzzzzz$$$$$$$$.

Re:I AM TEH MODERATOR

[Anonymous Coward]

It's true. Once I was on teh spoke I sized up the other mods, and this guy is good.

Sure it's not the button?

[curtoid]

All the money is in the CCD and Lens...

Uhh... Not sure what to say...

THE JOKE'S ON YOU HAHAHAH

[Anonymous Coward]

I just saw this in M2 already and your ass is unfair! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Teh spoke that bitch!

S15 SILVIA

[Anonymous Coward]

yum.

You mean Foveon

[John Harrison]

Here is a review of the most recently released Foveon X3 based camera. It is an interesting alternative to CCDs.

DALSA Semiconductor

[pipingguy]

DALSA builds the CCD chips used.

Not as bad as those idiots with 4 digit id's

[DAldredge]

Don't forget how stupid those /.ers with 4 digit ids are.

Zoom not required for that pic

[Anonymous Coward]

Show me a shot of the White House created with a your zoom lens at X mm, and I can show you a significantly better image with my fixed lens at X mm.

A fixed telephoto: Lighter and higher quality than its equivalent zoom.

Please learn how to use links.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please learn how to use links.

<a href="http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/s pirit_p011.html">Raw Image Gallery</a>

yields: Raw Image Gallery

Please learn how to use links.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please learn how to use links.

<a href="http://www.ummagurau.com/art/russia/">Photos by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii</a>

yields: Photos by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii

More Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii

[magullo]

The empire that was Russia

Only 3?

[uberdave]

I'm sure there were many components that were tested to destruction. Test drops of the airbag deployment systems, various rocker-bogie configurations, hundreds of component parts would need to be tested. I'm sure that it adds up to more than three rovers worth.

Rover parts

[uberdave]

Actually, $400M will buy a lot of LEGO.

Re:This is why my 2.7mp digital SLR is still great

[salimma]

A lot of people see the prints from my digital SLR, a gracefully aging Nikon D1h and are astonished to learn it's from digital. Most then refuse to believe it's only a 2.7mp camera.

As a novice when it comes to proper digital photography (just bought a semi-SLR Minolta Z1, 3.2mp), I must concur. Picture quality is way nicer than those pocket digital cameras when you actually have more control over camera settings.

And sporting a larger-diameter lens probably helps quite a lot too.